On this anniversary of 9-11 our hearts are with those who suffered and still suffer from the attacks and resultant conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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The documentary FLOCK OF DODOS, that I created the animation for, is now available on DVD. It is a fun little film and very enlightening about the Evolution-Intelligent Design debate. Nine out of ten veterbrate paleontologists thinks it rocks big time.
Order it now at Amazon.-http://www.amazon.com/Flock-Dodos-Jack-Cahill/dp/B000PATZKQ/%20ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0769478-0549704?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1189380128&sr=1-1 And as long as you're there, order some more copies of my book Drawing the Line. Extra copies make great gifts, and you can use them to prop up a backyard barbeque, plug a hole in your fence, or throw them at Free Marketeers and Corporate Apologists who annoy you.

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Birthdays: O.Henry, D.H. Lawrence, Brian DePalma, Hedy Lamarr, Lola Falana, Paul "Bear" Bryant, Tom Landry, Kristy McNichol, Lola Falana, Pinto Colvig the voice of Goofy & Pluto, and Gabby in Gullivers' Travels, Peter Tosh, Virginia Madsen, Amy Madigan, Moby

1841- British artist John Reno invented oil paint in a tube.

1847- Stephen Fosters song “Oh Susanna” first published.

1914- W.C. Handy's Saint Louis Blues published, the first true Jazz recording to gain national popularity. Myron “Grim” Natwick, the cartoonist who would one day create Betty Boop and Snow White for Disney, did the artwork for the coversheet. For this he was paid one gold dollar. To this day, musicians say " Thank God there was a W.C. Handy..."

1916- The Star Spangled Banner first sung at a baseball game at Cooperstown New York.

1947-Radio Bejing goes on the air.

1951-METROPOLIS TO MOSCOW? Robert Shayne, the actor who played the Inspector Henderson character for television’s Superman show appeared before the House American Activities Committee accused of being a communist. He was led off the set by the FBI in handcuffs as Man of Steel George Reeves and Jimmy Olsen protested vigorously. He was eventually cleared of all charges but because of the Blacklist he gave up acting and went into real estate.

1960- Terrytoon's Deputy Dawg t.v. show.

1960- Nancy Sinatra married Tommy Sands.

1966- "Kimba the White Lion" debuts in the U.S.

1967-The Beatles began filming Magical Mystery Tour.

1971- The “Jackson Five” Saturday morning cartoon show.

1972- The BBC quiz show Mastermind first broadcast. The shows creator Malcom Muggeridge claimed he got the idea while a prisoner of the Japanese in Malaysia and in truth the show resembles an interrogation. Some postman from Neasden sits in a dark room with a single spotlight in his face while people shoot questions at him about the lesser known works of Thomas Hardy, etc.

1987-Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" wins MTV's Best Video Award.

1987-Reggae great Peter Tosh and two others are shot and killed by
thieves who were robbing his Kingston, Jamaica home.

2001- THE 9-11 ATTACKS – When New York’s Twin Towers were completed in 1974, they were the tallest office buildings in the world and a symbol of American commercial power. Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists had tried to bring down the towers with a truck bomb in 1993. This day, terrorists hijacked three US domestic airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington DC. It was a beautiful, clear, Autumn day and the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center was timed for maximum press coverage. The images looked improbably like a movie stunt rather than a real disaster. The planned multiple attack was organized by Osama Ben-Laden, a rogue millionaire whose family has close ties to the rulers of Saudi Arabia. The passengers of a fourth hijacked airliner United Flt. 93 were talking to their loved ones on digital phones and were told of the planes crashing into World Trade Center. So the passengers armed with trays and boiling water attacked their hijackers -. The last words heard from passenger Bob Beamer ,“We’re taking back the plane…let’s roll!” Flight 93 crashed in an uninhabited field outside of Pittsburgh before it could be used as a human bomb. Authorities now think that plane would have been used to crash into the White House. Back in New York City, after burning with aviation gas at 1500 degrees for over an hour the two giant WTC towers pancaked in on themselves and plunged to the ground on top of rescue workers and firemen. 3,000 died from 150 countries.

Sunday I was at the Laguna Museum of Design admiring a show of the great psychodelic 60's artist Rick Griffen. Rick was a surfer turned Haight Ashbury acid head who's work adorned the first ZAP! comics and iconic album covers of the Doors, Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

But what brought back memories to me was his use of Speedball pen and the humble Rapidograph.

this is not Griffens of course, but Crumb. But why could I never crosshatch as good as this? Sigh,I guess I was always meant to be an animator.

Back in the 1970s, before Photoshop, before Painter or FLASH, when I and my fellow SVA mates were taking cartoon classes with Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner, the height of cool was to draw with a Rapidograph. Point .01, .001 and more. Pelikan pens from Germany especially. Drooling at the store window of Pearl Paint on Canal St, Brownes on 46th St. and Peck's Hobbies on 32nd and 5th.

I was forever cleaning clogs out of the thing. All of us in the student lounge jerking their pens up and down over our sketchbooks like tribal natives waving animist rattles to drive away bad Juju. But no, I must have used the wrong Higgins ink and now I need to soak the &*%$# nibs again. Scratching divits with the steel point into my illustration boards with my heavy hand, and clouds of Liquatex whiteout covering my errors, and my fingertips. This matched by blue-black middle finger from all the ink leaking out the front. Adding more and more crosshatching to each picture until they looked like a Brillopad with a cherrybomb in it. It was so much fun! Is this really how the Fabulou Freak Brothers started?

I don't know if they've invented a more civilized way to torture young cartoonists since my time. But here's a salute to all those who ever wielded a rapidograph in hopes of being the next Crumb or Neal Adams.



And remember Ruling Pens? Oh, don't get me started...!

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Birthdays: Fae Wray, Yma Sumac ( Star of Brazilian jazz and crossword puzzles- real name Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo, from Ichocán, Peru. Descendent of Inca royalty), Ian Fleming, Raymond Scott (composer of songs Carl Stalling loved to score into Bugs Bunny cartoons) Margaret Trudeau, Amy Irving, Arnold Palmer, Charles Kuralt, Jose Feliciano, Karl Lagerfield, Steven Jay Gould, Chris Columbus, Colin Firth

1608- Captain John Smith elected leader of the Jamestown Colony. This advances the common adventurer over the heads of several gentlemen like President Wingfield and Captain’s Martin and Newport. But since they first landed in April the rigors of the Virginia wilderness proved that Smith knew best how to run the colony. In December he will meet Pocahontas and start singing Broadway tunes.

1907-The first Neiman Marcus dept. store opens in Dallas.

1940- During the Battle of Britain, Nazi bombs hit Buckingham Palace, just missing the Royal Family. The Queen later Queen-Mum said:"At last now I can look the East-enders in the face." RAF ace Sgt. Ginger Lacey volunteered to go up and get the bomber who did the bombing. In a London fog his Hurricane fighter caught up to the offending German Heinkell –111 bomber and shot it down., But his own plane was so shot up in the battle he had to bail out. His parachute caught in a tree and as Sgt, Lacey looked down he saw an old Englishman in a Home Guard helmet training a shotgun at him. He obviously thought he was a German. Lacey explained he wasn’t a Jerry but the old duffer remained unconvinced. He was preparing to fire when finally let loose a torrent of Anglo-Saxon invective "YOU STUPID GIT, YOU G*DDAM F**KING OLD WANKER! WAIT TILL I GET MY BLOODY ID CARD OUT, etc. The Old man then lowered his weapon with relief:" "Ere. He said:" Anyone who can swear like that, can’t be a German.."

1953 - Swanson Foods sells it's first "TV dinner"

1955- the t.v. series 'Gunsmoke' premiered.

1963- The First New York Film Festival opened with Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel.

1966- H& B's Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossible's debut.

1968- Hanna Barbera's Space Ghost and Dino Boy' debut.

1972- Premiere of the landmark tv special Liza with a Z. Bob Fosse directed and choreographed the one woman show of the spangled 23 year old.

1977- The last execution in France by guillotine. Hamidas Djandoubi a Tunisian immigrant and convicted murderer.

1978- The Communist Premier of Bulgaria, Tobor Zhivkov, asked the Soviet KGB to do something about dissident Georgyi Markov who was making embarrassing broadcasts to Bulgaria on London's Radio Free Europe. After a broadcast Markov left the BBC offices and strolled across Waterloo Bridge. A man bumped into him and poked him in the shin with his umbrella tip. He excused himself and moved on. Markov grew sick and died within 24 hours on this day. A tiny pellet smaller than a pinhead carrying poison was injected into Markov by a hypodermic needle concealed in the umbrella tip.

1981- Picasso's painting Guernica is at last returned to Spain.

1993- The t.v series The X Files premiered. The truth is out there.

I’ve been doing history trivia for years, and I’ve sent out a daily history gazette since 1992. I know among my readers have been a number of historians and teachers from as far away as Sheffield England, Ireland, Beijing and Stonybrook, NY. There’s a number of contentious incidents I cover like revolutions and assassinations. But strangely enough, the incident I get more mail on than anything else is the scandal involving silent film comedian Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle.

Here is my original entry on Sept. 5th

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 pulled out their sixshooters and shot 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!"

Here is a new note I got the other day-

Tom: You did not mention that the autopsy showed Virginia Rappe suffered from untreated venereal decease that weakened her uterus walls and played a major roll in her death. Or that she would have lived if she was treated at the hospital. Or that she and her boyfriend were banned from the Hal Roach lot for infecting half the crew with VD. Or even the roll of dear Bambina Delmont, the blackmail stringer with her 80 felony counts for extortion, bigamy, fraud, and racketeering who tried to blackmail Roscoe and then turned him in when he would not pay.

They also point out that the original stories about Arbuckle were pushed by the Hearst Newspapers, sort of like the Fox News of their day.

So history is a living thing after all. And as Napoleon once said;” History are but myths we can all agree on.’

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Birthdays: Antonio Frescobaldi, Captain William Bligh, Jimmy the Greek Snyder, Joe Theismann, Cliff Robertson, Angela Cartwright, Alf Landon, Dee Dee Sharpe who sang the 60's R&B hit the Mashed Potato, Adam Sandler, Don Mattingly, Otis Redding, Anita Ekberg, Hugh Grant, Topol, Colonel Lyman Sanders the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, James Hilton-writer who created the name for the paradise Shangri-La for his novel Lost Horizon

1087- WILLIAM THE CONQUERER DIED- King William had subdued Normandy, England and Scotland and was one of the most successful kings of the Middle Ages. But old age and good living caught up to him and Mother Nature had the last laugh. He became so fat he could barely ride a horse. One day when riding near Mantes-La-Jolie his horse bucked. This caused his saddle pommel to stab up into his groin and rupture his bladder. He was carried to a monastery in great pain. His children ignored him in his last hours because they were too busy fighting for the throne. Even his servants stole the rich bed trappings and rings from his fingers as he lay in a coma. William the Conquerer died alone in a bare room. Finally the coffin provided was too small for the large body, now swollen with putrefied gas. Some monks tried to pound it into the box, but the corpse finally burst "filling the room with horrid, malodorous odors that drove all from the Church."

1825- BEETHOVEN'S LAST PUBLIC APPEARANCE. Before he retired to a government appointed home, Ludwig von Beethoven was still making appearances as a conductor and pianist, even though he was now stone deaf. The fees for personal appearances were still too good. The orchestra rehearsed to play the 9th Symphony and the Missa Solemnis while ignoring his commands, starting and stopping on a signal given by the first violinist. So Beethoven flapped his arms around fruitlessly while the orchestra played. Everyone enjoyed it even though people in the first few rows could hear the Maestro wailing to the music, unaware of his own voice. When the performance ended he was still gyrating, obviously a few bars behind the orchestra and oblivious to the cheers of the audience. The soprano made him turn around and bow.

1908- THE PATENTS TRUST- Thomas Edison, Charles Pathe and Leon Gaumont form the Motion Picture Patents Group. Called the "Trust", their attempt to monopolize movie production and strangle off the independents had a lot to do with the early filmmakers exodus to Los Angeles. Otherwise the film capitol of the world would have been Ft. Lee, New Jersey. The only positive result of the trust was they enforced a regular industry standard for film stock of 35 mm running at 24 frames per second. It seems the Mitchell Camera Company was developing a motorized motion picture camera to replace the hand crank variety but they needed an official speed to set it at. In a contentious meeting of the Trust held at the Waldorf Astoria no one could settle on a single speed. Finally the compromise was made to make it the number of delegates in the room- 24.

1910-Alice B. Toklas moved in permanently with Gertrude Stein in the 22 Rue de Flerus in Paris. Until Steins death in 1946 they held court in one of the most glittering social networks of twentieth century Paris. Regular soirees included Picasso, Matisse, Dali, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Max Ernst, Virgil Thompson, Sherwood Anderson, Max Ernst, Guilliame Apollinaire and Carlos Santayanna. But the ultra modern was not to everyone’s taste. Painter Mary Cassatt only visited once. She later told a friend:" I never saw so many horrible things, I never met so many horrible people!"


1920- Silent movie star Olive Thomas, nicknamed America's Kid Sister, partied a little too hard at the Dead Rat Cafe in Paris. The 21 year old star died of an overdose of cocaine and alcohol. Another theory was she accidentally overdosed on mercury bicholoride tablets. Her nude body was discovered wrapped in a full length ermine fur left on her couch in the Ritz Hotel. The scandal started the first investigation of drugs in Hollywood. It netted an army captain named Spaulding who admitted that film stars like Thomas, Mabel Normand and Ramon Navarro were regular clients for morphine, heroin and cocaine. Shortly after Groucho Marx put in his vaudeville show Animal Crackers the song Hooray for Captain Spaulding,.

1926 – The National Broadcasting Company or NBC created by Radio Corporation of
America RCA. Under the direction of David Sarnoff it became the powerhouse network of broadcasting, recording and later television.

1939- One week after Hitler invaded Poland and World War Two began, Italian Fascist planes taking off from their bases in Libya bombed the city of Tel Aviv in British Protectorate Palestine, killing 150.

1939- The first Andy Panda cartoon.

1939- The first day of shooting on Charlie Chaplin’s film the Great Dictator.

1943- The first V-2 missile hit London, destroying buildings in the Chiswick area. The V-2 was the first ballistic missile and the Allies were powerless to stop or intercept it. Tens of thousands of London children were evacuated for safety to Scotland and even as far as Canada. After the war the left over V-2’s were gathered up by the US and Red Armies as the basis for the beginning of their space programs.

1945 – The first bug in a computer program was discovered by Grace Hopper. A moth
was removed with tweezers from a relay & taped into the log. Since then any computer glitch was nicknamed "a bug".

1950 - 1st use of TV laugh track invented by Hank McCune.

1951 - 1st broadcast of the soap opera" Love of Life " on CBS-TV.

1956- Elvis Presley appeared on nationwide television on the Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan himself had vowed never to have the kid on his show but caved in to network pressure. He stayed home that first time and actor Charles Laughton was the substitute host. CBS Network censors thought the gyrations of Elvis' pelvis so obscene that in many markets they blacked out the lower portion of the screen so he was covered the waist down.

1967- George of the Jungle t.v. show with SuperChicken and Tom Slick premiered.

1982- Princess Grace of Monaco, the former movie actress Grace Kelly, died in a car accident on the mountainous hill roads of Monaco. Twenty years earlier in the film To Catch a Thief, Alfred Hitchcock had her drive her car at dangerous speeds over the exact same hairpin turns.

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.