Wow, What a party at Gordon Biersch last night! Thank you so much for braving the elements. We sold a lot of books. Thank you Tina Price and Creative Talent Networks. It was good seeing you all.
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B-Days: William Penn-1644, King James II Stuart, Joseph Plateau, Samurai sword master Masoaka Shiki 1867, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lillian Gish, Ralph Lauren, Eamon De Valera, e.e.cummings, Mobutu Sese Seko, C. Everet Koop, John Dean III, Roger Moore is 79, Jack Arnold the director of the Creature from the Black Lagoon

1670-At a performance before King Louis XIV the Sun King at the Chateau of Chambord Moliere’s satire “Le Bourgeouis Gentilhomme” premiered. Lully wrote the music.

1873-MY NAME IS MUYBRIDGE. One night a carriage drove up from San Francisco to the Yellow Jacket Mine near Calistoga in the north Napa Valley. A man asked for the foreman Major Harry Larkyns. When Larkyns answered the door the man quietly said to him:”Good Evening, Major. My name is Muybridge. Here is the answer to the message you sent my wife earlier. “ He pulled out a pistol and shot Larkyns through the heart, killing him instantly. The killer was the famous Photographer and Motion Picture Pioneer Edweard Muybridge. Muybridges’ young wife Flora had been having an affair with Larkyns while he was working on his Motion Studies Series in Palo Alto. Muybridge discovered the son she bore him was not his. They were even calling him Little Harry behind his back. The jury that convened in Napa did not hang the artist-inventor. In the Code of the Old West proven adultery was considered a justifiable homicide. Muybridge was acquitted. Flora Muybridge divorced him in 1875 and after her early death two years later he gave Little Harry to a San Francisco Orphans Asylum and refused to pay for his upkeep.

1908- The Chicago Cubs defeated the Detroit Lions for their first, and so far only, World Series championship. The next time they got to the series was 1945.

1912- While going to give a political speech in Milwaukee, a lunatic named William Shrenck shot Teddy Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet was slowed down tearing through his clothes, speech notes and eyeglasses case and just missed any important organs. Bleeding from his side Teddy spat in his hand to see if there was blood in his spittle, which would mean internal damage. Seeing there was none he went ahead and gave his 90 minute speech before going to a hospital. -Bully!

1926- Happy Birthday Winnie the Pooh! A.A. Milne’s first book of Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Christopher Robin debuted this day.

1934- The Lux Radio Theater premiered.

1954- First day of shooting on Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of the Ten Commandments staring Charlton Heston out in the Egyptian desert.

1959- Errol Flynn died of a heart attack in Vancouver. Exhausted by overindulgence in his favorite vices, doctors said the 50 year old movie star had the body of a 70 year old. A descendant of one of the Bounty mutineers, the Tasmanian born actor's last film was ' Cuban Rebel Girls'.

1962- THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS BEGAN- President John F. Kennedy was shown top secret U-2 photos of Russian nuclear missile pads being constructed 90 miles away in Cuba. This meant instead of a 30 minute warning time a Soviet H-Bomb could hit New York or Washington in 7-10 minutes. Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked CIA operative Richard Helms: “Dick, is it true there are Russian missiles in Cuba?” When Helms replied there were, the erudite RFK reacted: “ OH, SH*T!!” For the next 14 days the world came close to nuclear Armageddon.

1964- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr won the Nobel Peace Prize.

1972- Joe Cocker and his backup band were busted in Australia for drug possession.

1978- Lover Scott Thorsten “outs” Liberace by filing a palimony suit against him. Even after Liberace died of AIDS my mother refused to believe the outrageous pianist was gay. She thought “he just never found the right girl..”

1979- Wayne Gretsky scored his first goal.

Birthdays: Revolutionary War heroine Mary Ludwig nicknamed Molly Pitcher, Paul Simon is 65,, Lily Langtry-the Jersey Lilly, Lenny Bruce, Larraine Day, Nipsy Russell, Cornel Wilde, Margaret Thatcher, Herblock, Yves Montand, Nancy Kerrigan, Sammy Hagar, Marie Osmond, Jerry Rice, Chris Carter, Kelly Preston, according to the X-Files this is the birthday of Special Agent Fox-Mulder-1961

Happy Friday the Thirteenth! Medieval tradition held that Judas Iscariot was the thirteenth apostle and the Vikings thought wicked Loki was the thirteenth god. Combine that with Friday, the day Adam died and Jesus was crucified, and you have a potent mix! But you have a Lucky Day!

1307- MASSACRE of the TEMPLARS- The Knights Templar were a holy order of warrior monks named for their Crusader base at the site of the Temple of Herod in Jerusalem. After the Crusades while the Knights of St John continued to fight Moslems in Greece and Malta the Templars settled back in Europe and went into banking. They amassed great wealth all tax-free because it was Church property. This annoyed kings like Brtiain’s Edward Ist and France’s Phillip the Fair. So this day Phillip bribed the Pope to declare the entire Templar Order heretics and burned at the stake. Myths abound about the Templars having bizarre rituals and the secrets like the location of the Holy Grail, but most of it was made up by the Inquisitors to frame them. But one neat idea they brought back from the Middle East was the personal check. This way a Templar Knight could cross international borders without carrying heavy bags of gold, then go to the nearest Templar castle and redeem a note with his signet on it for money. I wonder if their notes had pretty sunsets painted on them...

1590- Chief Powhatan, head of a confederation of Algonguian tribes in the Cheasapeake Bay area, wiped out a Spanish Jesuit colony attempting to set up on his beach. He had heard from the Seminoles in Florida what these metal clad palefaces were capable of. Nineteen years later in 1607 another annoying bunch of English palefaces landed on his beach, but this time Powhatan was curious about these ones, especially when one started dating his daughter Pocahontas.

1768- THE BIRTH OF YANKEE DOODLE- The first written evidence of the song being played, this day by a British army band at a harvest festival in the Hudson Valley. The song means Yankee Doodle -Stupid American... “ stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni" A macaroni was English slang for someone dressed in the latest Italian fashions, hence a dandy. That just because the stupid Yankee sticks a feather in his hat he thinks he is a gentleman. Later in the Revolution the song meant to lampoon Americans was adopted by the rebels and played to the British while they were laying down their arms at Yorktown and Saratoga.

1792- Cornerstone of the White House set. First called the President’s Palace, later the Executive Mansion, it was modeled by James Hoban after the Irish estate house of the Duke of Leinster. Instead of a chaplain President George Washington had Masters of the Masonic Rite sanctify the building with their secret rituals. The mansion took 8 years to build. Constant problems halted construction like when the workers went on strike when the government closed down their on-site bordello. A compromise was made to move it off site.
When President John Adams moved in in 1800 it still wasn't finished, plus Washington took all his furniture with him. Abigail Adams hung her wash in the East Room because of the nice breeze. It wasn't until after the British torched the place in 1814 did it receive it's first coat of whitewash. The Oval Office wasn't built until Truman's time in 1947.

1903- Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland premiered.

1904- Sigmund Freud's book 'The Interpretation of Dreams" first published.

1938- RKO Pictures was having a salary dispute with their singing cowboy Gene Autry. So they cast around for another handsome cowpoke. Today they signed a would-be dentist from a vocal group called the Sons of the Pioneers named Leonard Slye. He became a star with the film “Under Western Skies” under his new name- Roy Rogers.

1947- Kukla, Fran & Ollie debuted on television. Burt Tillstrom was the creator and puppeteer and Fran was his wife.

1970- Black activist Angela Davis was arrested on suspicion she smuggled guns to a Black Panther group so they could stage a shootout with California police. The evidence was thin and it was more about the Berkeley professor’s radical political philosophy that got her arrested. But you need more than suspicion to lock somebody up in the Good Old US of A so Angela Davis was acquitted after a long very public trial.

1978- Mickey Mouse gets his star on Hollywood Blvd.

1982- The computer spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3 introduced.

Dear Readers,
Many times I am asked where I get all this trivia from. What book was I getting it out of? The answer is I write all of this myself. I've been collecting data and writing trivia for many years. It's a hobby of mine. When I go through a book or article I find interesting, I keep some dates for my collection. I may be off at times, but that is what makes the hunt all the more interesting. Rest assured, Virginia, while the city sleeps, animation trivia is being written and recorded.

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Birthdays: "God's Imp" King Edward VI- only son of Henry VIII, Emperor Pedro Ist of Brazil 1798, actress Helena Modjeska, Ralph Vaughn-Williams, Alastair Crowley, Luciano Pavarrotti is 72, animator Izzy Klein, Joan Rivers, Dick Gregory, Tony Kubek, Hugh Jackman

1492- COLUMBUS STEPS ASHORE IN AMERICA.- The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria drop anchor off San Salvador in the Bahamas Oct 22nd Old Style. It was a full moon. Columbus had offered a reward for the first man to see land. Juan de Boromeo aboard the Pinta sighted land first around 2:10AM, but Columbus later claimed he did and kept the money- cheap bugger. Expecting to meet Chinese people Columbus brought with him a translator who could speak Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish and Hebrew as well as a letter from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to the Great Khan of Cathay. Obviously none of this was of much help with the Taino Indians. Although other people have claimed to have discovered the Western Hemisphere earlier: The Chinese, the Vikings or Irish Saint Brendan, Columbus' landing was the beginning of the great European-African Migration to the Western Hemisphere. As Noel Coward put it:" Let’s just say that by 1492 we just couldn't ignore you any longer."

1810- THE FIRST OCKTOBERFEST- Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig 1st invited the people of Munich to celebrate his marriage to Princess Theresa von Sachsen-Hildeburghausen. Big tables were set up outside the city gates, horse races held and beer flowed freely for days. The custom was too good to do only once so every year the Octoberfest occurs in Therese’s Fields- Thereseweisen, or simply Weis’n. Ein Prozit!

1886- Beginning of Sherlock Holmes story:” Adventure of the Second Stain”.

1928- The Winnie the Pooh stories featuring Tigger are first published

1937- Under pressure from parent Paramount Studio, Max Fleischer signed the first animation union contract and settled the Cartoonist strike begun May 8th. The following year Fleischer tried to escape unions by moving his studio to Right-To-Work State Florida, but the additional expenses and poor box office ruined his studio.

1940-60 year old silent movie star Tom Mix died in auto crash outside of Florence, Arizona. He ignored signs that a bridge was out and fell into a dry gulley. A large overpacked suitcase popped out of his back seat and crushed him. The “Suitcase of Death” is preserved along with Tony the Wonder Horse at the Tom Mix Museum in Oklahoma.

1942- Louis Armstrong married his fourth wife, singer Lucille Watson. She made a home for him in a suburban neighborhood in Queens,New York that Sachmo always returned to after traveling the world.

1960- During a long,loud debate on colonialism, during a speech by the Phillipine Ambassador, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev got the attention of the U.N. General Assembly by taking off his shoe and banging it on the table. This caused an uproar so uncontrollable that the Secretary General broke his gavel trying to restore order.


1966- Sammy Davis Jr. appeared on the Batman TV Show. Sock-it-to-me!

1971-Weber & Rice’s hippy musical Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger theater.

1977- Script completed for the classic film comedy Animal House.

1994-Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg announce the partnership that would later be named Dreamworks SKG.

1997-53-year old Singer John Denver died when he crashed his ultra-light Long E-Z plane into the ocean near Monterey, California. Later reports showed he was flying inebriated.He had the remains of a sixpack of beer he was drinking by himself. The impact was so great his body had to be identified by fingerprints.

2005- Chinese archaeologists near the Yellow River discover the world’s oldest bowl of noodles. Someone’s fossilized noodle lunch from a bowl tipped over four thousand years ago or 2,000BC.

Birthdays: Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Heinz the Ketchup king,, Jerome Robbins, Carl Hubbard, Ron Leibman, John Candy, Omar Shariff, Art Blakey, Luke Perry, Joan Cusak, Sig Ruman – the fat actor with the goatee and the over-the-top German accent in the Marx Brothers comedies and Ninotchka

1800- The remaining French army trapped in Egypt and abandoned by Napoleon made a deal with the Egyptians and their English allies to get evacuated back to France. One of the things that had to give up to the Brits was the Rossetta Stone, the key to deciphering Ancient Heiroglyphics. Another thing the French troops brought back to Europe was marijuana, easily purchased in Egyptian bazaars. The old soldiers said the weed didn’t give you a hangover like drinking brandy did and made recovering from wounds easier.
Psst! Dude,dude! Do you feel it? Man, I am sooo wasted!"

1868- Telegraph operator Thomas Edison patented his first invention. It was a device that recorded the votes of legislators automatically. It proved unpopular with politicians because it eliminated their ability to rig votes and filibuster.
courtesy talkingpix.com
1944-“ To Have and to Have Not,” written by Ernest Hemingway premiered. The movie paired Humphrey Bogart with a sultry Harpers model turned actress named Betty Persky, now changed to Lauren Bacall. Bacall originally had a higher voice but director Howard Hawks told her to go behind the soundstage and scream for an hour every day to bring her voice down to a dusky, sexy alto. It worked on Bogart who fell in love and married her despite his being 44 and she 20 years old. The nicknamed each other Slim and Steve after the characters in the film.“If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.”

1960- The Bugs Bunny Show premiered on TV. “Overture, hit the lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh what heights we’ll hit…..etc..”

1975- NBC needed a Saturday replacement for Best Of Carson reruns, so Lorne Michaels’ TV show SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE premiered. First guest host George Carlin did his opening monologue while high- and the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players: John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd ,Gilda Radner, Garret Morris, Chevy Chase, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Mike O’Donaghue. Albert Brooks did a short film and Andy Kaufman did his Mighty Mouse lip sync routine. Paul Shaefer conducted the music and the show was held in NBC’s Studio 8H, which was built originally for Maestro Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony of the Air. At the last moment a sketch by young Billy Crystal was cut from the show.. The show also revived the career of announcer Don Pardo, who had trouble finding work since the original Jeopardy Show was cancelled.

1975- Bill Clinton married Hillary Rodham.

1978- Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Sid was too stoned to adequately explain why he killed the love of his life. It’s assumed they had a suicide pact. Vicious died of a drug overdose before his trial.

2001- V.S. Naipul won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Yesterday I had a nice interview with KPCC radio-journalist John Rabbe for his show Off Ramp. Don't know if it will air this Saturday, but I'll let you know. We met at El Coyote on Beverly in Hollywood. It's been there since 1931, and in those early years it was one of the places the underground animation union would hold its secret meetings. Present at those early meetings were President Ted Pierce, Grim Natwick, Ed Friedman, Shamus Culhane, Al Eugster and Frank Tashlin. No Walt Disney Artist would show up yet to support the nascent movement.
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Birthdays: Martin Luther, Guiseppi Verdi, Helen Hayes, Disney art director Mary Blair, Louis Lumiere of the cineam inventing Lumiere Brothers, Thelonius Monk, Warner Bros surrealist animator Rod Scribner, LaVerne Harding one of the first women animators, Alberto Giacometti, Tanya Tucker, Harold Pinter, James Clavel, Jodi Benson the voice of the Little Mermaid, David Lee Roth, Bradley Whitford, Sharon Osbourne is 55.

1469- Renaissance master artist Fra Filippo Lippi died, probably poisoned by the family of a girl he seduced. The great painter was a major influence on Leonardo daVinci and Massaccio, but for a Carmalite monk he had an immoderate lust for women. He left one son, the artist Fillipino Lippi, by his wife Lucrezia Buti, a nun he had carried off from the convent of Santa Margherita promising to use her as a model for the Madonna.

1886- The first Tuxedo jacket worn at the Autumn Ball at Tuxedo Park, New York. Another story of the origin of the fashion was supposedly invented by English gentleman on safari with Bertie the Prince of Wales. Wanting to appear at dinner formally but because of heat and high spikey grass they cut the lower part of their long dinner jackets off.

1953- "Winky Dink and You" show. Children were invited to place a piece of celluloid acetate on their t.v. screens from a kit and help Winky Dink through numerous adventures by drawing on their t.v. screens. Of course many kids didn’t wait for the acetate but just drew on their family TVs with indelible markers. The birth of Interactive T.V. -?

courtesy GoodDealGames.com

1957- RKO Studios, who produced King Kong, The John Ford Westerns and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, was sold to Desilu- the television production company of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez.

1962- The BBC banned on air play of a novelty record The Monster Mash, by Bobby Picket doing his impersonation of Boris Karloff. For some reason they considered it offensive.

1980- Actor William 'Billy" Thomas, also known in the Our Gang kiddie comedies as Buckwheat, died at 49. His last words weren't "O' Taayy !"

1985- Orson Welles and Yul Brynner die one hour apart. They were both 70. Welles had just finished taping yet another appearance on the Merv Griffin Show. Brynner had a furious smoking habit, supposedly leaving one lit cigarette in every room of his house as he paced around thinking.When he knew he was dying of the stuff, he recorded several television spots to be aired after his death. He looked squarely at camera and said: " I smoked. -Don't."