This week across most of the country, classes are beginning. A new crop of animation students will take the first step towards their professional career. Today all is potential, everything is hope and excitement. Here’s some advice to all you newbies out there.

You’ll be digesting lots of information in the coming months, stuff about what software program does what, the physics of movement, techniques of acting, of cinema. But theres more to being a pro.

Much of the emphasis in the next months will be on your personal growth as an artist. But remember that professional animation is a group effort. Lone mavericks like Bill Plympton are wonderful, but the exception. For most of us, animation is a collaborative medium, it requires many hands to make something that looks like it was done by one. The long hours you put in will mean you will often spend more time with co-workers than you will with your own families. This close collaboration, coupled with the money guys' tendency to treat us as a tribe and the public’s general lack of appreciation over how animation is done, has created a tight-knit community.

We all know each other, we all support each other, we hang out with one another. We know what each other is up to no matter where we are around the world. Some of us even marry one another, and we all grow old together. I watched the Golden Age animators see each other off on that final trip to Forest Lawn.

Many of us meet in college. We form bonds there we keep throughout our lives. Many at PIXAR first met at Cal Arts, many USC and UCLA classmates stay in touch long after they stopped wearing the crimson and light blue. Good collaboration begins with Trust, and we begin to take the measure of others and form that trust in college.

The projects come and go. We all read how movie empires rise and fall. Studios like Hanna & Barbera and UPA that once employed hundreds year round, are now just memories. But the animators go on. The friends you make you will have for the rest of your life, likewise the enemies you make will also follow you to the end of your life. So know this- no one project or promotion is worth losing the respect of your peers. That respect is money in the bank. I’ve had agents and promotions, but most of the jobs I got, I didn’t get from sitting in a lobby with my portfolio, I got them from my contacts.

Welcome to Animation. Enjoy the school year, learn and grow. And keep these thoughts with you, as I did after they were first told to me.


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Birthdays: Man Ray, Martha Ray, LBJ ( Lyndon Baines Johnson), George William Hegel, C.S. Forester, Hannibal Hamlin- Abe Lincolns first term vice president, Barbara Bach, Theodore Dreiser, Lady Antonia Fraser, Mother Theresa, Tommy Sands, Tuesday Weld, Mangesuthu Buthelezi,Downtown Julie Brown, Charlie Fleischer the voice of Roger Rabbit is 57, Paul Rubens-aka Pee Wee Herman

53 B.C.- JULIUS CAESAR LANDED IN ENGLAND- Caesar paused from his conquest of Gaul to check out the British Isles. He didn't stay long because Channel storms were playing havoc with his supply ships. Just long enough to fight some Celts under their chief Cassilvelaunus, collect some tribute and add a chapter to his memoirs. The Romans returned in A.D. 61 under instructions from Claudius to conquer and colonize. London, Colchester and York were originally Roman army camps. The Romans never considered Britain a good investment though, for the two legions that had to be stationed there year round to protect colonists from the Scottish Picts (Painted People), all the Romans got was some tin, slaves and a bigger road map. In 401 A.D. the Romans evacuated Britain to cover their collapsing Empire. The Romanized Britons who followed the armies back across the Channel settled in North Gaul and called it Brittany. This is why Breton is a sister language of Gaelic.

1506- Pope Julius II attacks Perugia and Bologna for Holy Mother Church. After the conquest Julius has Michelangelo cast a nine foot statue of him to remind the Perugians who kicked their butts. Michelangelo created his largest free standing bronze caste, but we don't have it anymore. In 1512 Julius's enemies liberated Perugia and the happy people melted down the hated statue and cast it into a huge cannon they nicknamed :"La Julia" -Big Julie.

1660- Poet John Milton's books were publicly burned on Tyburn hill. It wasn't because of any great suppression of of humanist ideas. Milton was an outspoken supporter of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan regime that had governed England. But now the King was back on the throne and unimpressed with his writings.

1664- NIEUW AMSTERDAAM BECOMES NEW YORK. The English had disputed Holland's stake in America based on the early exploration of John Cabot. Now with the growth of the New England colonies, the English Civil War over and the Spanish Menace diminishing England sent a large battle fleet under Colonel Rollins to New Amsterdam to demand the surrender of the colony. The Dutch governor was an old one-legged mercenary named Peter Stuyversant. He wanted to make a fight of it and had even set up a battery of cannon on -where else? the Battery. However his city council were men of commerce, not soldiers. They told him if he wanted to fight he should do it himself because they were surrendering. Even his own son was against fighting. Stuyversant in a rage shouted at the burghers:" Keep to your shovels and barrows!" The governor himself hobbled up to the cannon pointed at the British fleet and lit a match to fire the first shot. He paused and noticed the silent stares of all those around him. The chaplain of the colony, Dominie Megapolensis, silently took Stuyversant by the hand down from the fort and Stuyversant signed the surrender. He was allowed to keep his large farm, or in Dutch, his Bouwerie -the Bowery. Five years later the English named renamed the city after King Charles II's brother the Duke of York for his birthday. The Duke of York's protection kept Long Island from being made part of Connecticut. The first English colony planted after the conquest was named for the only part of Britain to remain loyal to King Charles during the Cromwell period, the Isle of Jersey (New Jersey). Charles main supporter was James Leslie, Baron Newark. (Newark N.J.) and his son the Duke of Monmouth. Still the old Dutch roots were deep and even in George Washington's time Dutch was the predominant language on New York's streets. In 1832 Martin Van Buren became our first knickerbocker President.

1667- The first record in English of a Hurricane, this one striking near Jamestown Virginia. Of course the Spanish in the Caribbean had been seeing hurricanes since Columbus’s third voyage in 1503.

1776- THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND- The worst defeat for Americans in the Revolutionary War. The British regiments destroy George Washington’s army in Brooklyn while he was in Manhattan still waiting for the main attack. Washington sent two generals to command, Generals Sullivan and William Alexander, who insisted everyone call him Lord Stirling in memory of some Scottish inheritance he claimed he was cheated out of. George sent them without specifying who was in overall command and then went over himself and gave still more conflicting orders. The British General Henry Clinton marched down the Kings Highway to Jamaica then found a secret path behind Yankee lines guarded by only 5 militiamen. Clinton had walked these paths when he was a young officer stationed in NY. His superior Lord William Howe at first refused the idea- he said it smacked of the German School of Tactics. He felt the Americans were too stupid to panic when their flank was turned. But he gave in, the Yankees did panic and Lord Howe won a great victory.
The British had gotten over their shock of the American’s Indian style of guerrilla fighting and countered by using German jaeger battalions, professional hunters turned soldier who were accustomed to fighting from behind rocks and trees. Generals Sullivan and Lord Stirling were forced to surrender after furious fighting around the Cortelyou House. One Scots Redcoat officer wrote: “Multitudes of retreating Americans who attempted to escape across the Gowanus River were drowned or suffocated in the morasses- a proper punishment for Rebels!”

1814- in England poet Percy Shelley eloped with Mary, the only daughter of John Godwin and Mary Wollenstonecraft. Godwin had objected to Shelley’s proposal for his daughters hand because he was an opium addict, a sexual libertine, an atheist and already married with a baby daughter! Yeah, but besides all that what’s your objection? They ran off followed by Mary’s stepsister Claire who started sleeping with Lord Byron. Mary of course was the author of Frankenstein. If I knew all this maybe I would have paid more attention in English Lit 101.

1912- Edgar Rice Burroughs published Tarzan of the Apes. He made enough from it that he bought a huge ranch that today is the name of a Los Angeles neighborhood-Tarzana.

1917- Straight Shooting, the first film directed by John Ford released. Before that Ford did bit parts and stuntwork. He was a Klansman in Birth of a Nation. Not because he was prejuduced but because it was a paying extras job. You can tell him from the others because he kept fussing with his hood that slipped over his eyes while he was trying to ride.

1930- Lon Chaney Sr. died of throat cancer. During filming of a remake of the Unholy Three, a theory of the time was a wind machine blew an artificial gypsum snowflake into Chaney's mouth - it caused an irritation that became a tumor.

1955- The first Guinness Book of World Records published.

1950- NBC and General Foods abruptly cancelled the hit television show “the Aldrich Family” when a pamphlet called Red Channels accused one of the show’s stars Jean Muir, of being a communist.

1953- The film Roman Holiday introduced a new young actress from Holland named Audrey Hepburn.

1967- Beatles manager Brian Epstein overdosed on sleeping pills.

1968- Former master animator Bill Tytla's request to return to Disney was turned down. The artist who animated Grumpy the Dwarf, Dumbo and the Devil on Bald Mountain even offered to do a free "trial animation test" to show he still had it. Disney exec W.H. Anderson wrote him:" We really have only enough animation for our present staff." Tytla died later that year.

1990- Guitar great Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash outside Alpine Valley Wisconsin, on his way back to Chicago, after an "All Stars of the Blues" type show. Stevie Ray took the last remaining seat on the helicopter after Eric Clapton got off, claiming he'd rather take a limo back to Chicago, which was about an hour away.

Todays Birthdays: Sir Robert Walpole the first British Prime Minister, Albert the Prince Consort – do you have Prince Albert in a can? Well…let him out! Nyuk, Nyuk!, poet Guilliame Appollinaire who coined the term Surrealism, Christopher Isherwood, McCauley Culkin is 26, Dr. Lee DeForrest pioneering scientist in radio, sound movies and television, director Barbet Schroeder, Branford Marsalis jazz musician and brother of Winton Marsalis.

580 A.D.- An ancient Chinese inventory of the household of a nobleman makes the first recorded reference in human history to toilet paper. The ancient Romans used a sponge tied to a small stick you were expected to rinse out afterwards for use by the next person.

1498- Michelangelo gets a job. The big Florentine stone cutter was commissioned by Pope Alexander VI to carve a Pieta, a Mary lamenting over the body of Jesus. This Pope was the father of the poisoners Caesare and Lucretzia Borgia. Caesare employed Leonardo Da Vinci.

1576- Great Renaissance artist Titian died at age 99. He outlived all the artists of his generation, worked almost every day of his life. He might have gone on longer had he not caught the plague.

1868- First practical typewriter patented by Christopher Scholes. The Remington Company who were famous for making firearms took up the typewriter and mass produced it. In 1874 Mark Twain admitted to a friend that he preferred writing on it. He asked that to be a kept secret as then many writers felt this newfangled technology would ruin the art of writing.

1946 - George Orwell published "Animal Farm". Orwell said he conceived the idea for the novel while watching out his window a small boy driving a huge draft horse. The horse could have easily crushed the boy had it the free will but instead patiently endured the boys taunts and flicks with a small switch.

1958-First day of shooting on the Alfred Hitchcock film North By Northwest. Conceived as a plot that ended in a chase across the stone faces of Mt. Rushmore, the original working title of Ernst Lehman’s script was The Man Who Hung From Lincoln’s Nose. The U.S. Parks Service refused Hitchcock's crew permission to film on the mountain. All those outdoor shots were faked with mattes.

1967 - Beatles, Mick Jagger & Marienne Faithful met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. George Harrison starts learning sitar from an Indian virtuoso named Ravi Shankar.

1980- The great one-eyed, surrealist animation director Fred "Tex" Avery died after collapsing in the parking lot of the Hanna-Barbera Studio. He was producing the Kwiky Koala show there. He had been suffering from lung cancer and was depressed over personal loss in his family. He was also hurt by the criticism his television commercial spots of the Frito Bandito were getting from Mexican American Anti-Defamation groups. Frito-Lay had dropped the campaign. Tex Avery was 71. Two weeks before as he was pulling his car into the studio parking lot, he was asked by a friend why he was working in Hanna & Barbera. Tex stuck his head out of the car window and laughed:" Hey, Don’t you know? this is where all the elephants come to die!"

1985- The first Yugo economy car arrived in the US. Ten years later the Yugo plant was bombed by the US Air Force during the Bosnian Civil War, much to the relief of car design critics.

Birthdays: King Ludwig II the Mad of Bavaria, Leonard Bernstein, Brette Hart, Lola Montez (flamenco dancing mistress of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria), Alan Pinkerton, Elvis Costello, Clara Bow, Ruby Keeler, Monty Hall, Van Johnson, Willis Reed, Frederick Forsythe, Wayne Shorter, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dr. Bruno Bettleheim, Rolly Fingers, Gene Simmons of KISS, Anne Archer, Tim Burton, Sean Connery is 78, Claudia Schiffer is 37

1830- This is the day of the legendary race between the locomotive the Tom Thumb and a horse and buggy outside of Baltimore. The Tom Thumb weighing in at about a ton and developing a whopping one horse power. The boiler driven fan broke down near the end, The horse won. Still, the train’s performance was so impressive that the first U.S. railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, shifted from horse drawn to steam railroad.

1835- The New York Sun newspaper ran the amazing story that British astronomer Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of Neptune, had observed little men living on the surface of the Moon! The story proved false but it boosted the sales of the paper.

1900- Is God dead? No, just Frederich Neitszche,this day

1944- PARIS LIBERATED. Adolf Hitler had ordered the Germans to dynamite all the major landmarks: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame etc, But when the time came, the German commander Gen. Deitrich von Choltitz refused to do it. There was street fighting but the heavier German tank units had voluntarily evacuated the city. Free French General LeClerc led the allied column into the City of Lights. Ernest Hemingway and a few paratroops liberated the Ritz Hotel's wine cellar and Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were discovered by CBS correspondent Eric Severaid living quietly unharmed outside of town.

1967 – In Mississippi George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of American Nazi Party, was blown off the speakers platform with a double barreled shotgun. Although not as significant as the Martin Luther King or the Kennedy’s assassinations, it was another incident in the violent 1960’s. George Lincoln Rockwell was also a distant cousin of artist Norman Rockwell, although the artist was embarrassed to admit it.

1970- A young British singer named Elton John did his first US tour, opening at the Troubadour in LA.

1980- The premiere of the Broadway musical version of the classic movie 42nd Street. In a moment of Broadway melodrama producer David Merrick came out on stage and startled the cast and audience by announcing that the director of the play Gower Champion had died that very day. 42nd Street went on to be a smash hit. The play itself is about a Broadway director who works himself to death creating a hit musical.

1989- Congressman Barney Frank confirmed that he had paid for the services of a gay male prostitute Stephan Gobie. The unrepentant and refreshingly frank-Frank continues to serve in Congress to this day.

1989- The Voyager 2 probe left Neptune and shoots off into deep space after completing it reconnaissance of the outer planets of our solar system. It discovered the rings of Jupiter and Neptune, the additional moons of these planets, and the volcanoes of the Jovian moon Io, and the ice of Europa. Today you have ten times more computing power in your laptop than in the Voyager spacecraft, yet for years later it continued to transmit signals back to Earth.

2001-Beautiful 22 year old R&B singer Allieya was killed, when her charter plane crashed on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas.

Birthdays: Jorge Luis Borges, William Wilberforce, Marlee Matlin, Yasir Arafat, Max Beerbom, Cal Ripken Jr, John Stimson, Joshua Lionel Cowan the inventor of Lionel toy electric trains, Steve Guttenberg, Kenny Baker-C3PO in Star Wars, Stephen Fry, Gerry Cooney, Durward Kirby- T.V. announcer who sued the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show because of a prop device called the "Kirward Derby", Duke Kahanamoku-1890- Olympic medalist who popularized and promoted the Hawaiian sport of Surfing to California and Australia. Dave Chappelle

410 A.D. ROME FALLS TO THE BARBARIANS- Alaric the Visigoth marched a horde of Goths, Vandals and Huns to the gates of Rome. At midnight escaped Gothic slaves opened the Salarian Gate to them. Romans awoke next morning to the sound of barbarian horns, The Goths plundered the capitol of the Roman Empire for three days. Roman Emperor Honorius had moved his Imperial Court to Milan and there was an Eastern Emperor in Constantinople. The Roman Senate continued to meet until 578 AD. But the symbolic significance of the Roman Empire losing Rome was devastating. Even though the Empire staggered along for a few more years, this event marks the end of the Ancient World and the beginning of the Dark Ages. In Africa, St. Jerome wrote:” It is the end of the world, I cannot write for the tears.” One pagan historian claimed Rome fell because the Christian emperors had forbidden the Senate to make offerings to Mars the Avenger at the beginning of each session. Yet Alaric was a Gnostic Christian and prayed in church while his warriors ran amok in the city. No church buildings were harmed. Part of the ransom Alaric demanded was 5,000 pounds of pepper. I guess that says something about Barbarian cooking. Within six months old Alaric died while the Goths were on the march. So they dammed up the river Po, placed him in an underground crypt and let the river back in. Today no one knows where it is. It’s an archaeologist dream to find the tomb of Alaric, filled with the spoils of the Roman Empire.

1227- GENGHIS KHAN DIED. A man called Temujin united a few small nomadic tribes into one of the greatest empires in history and was named the Prince of Conquerers or the Genghis Khan. How he died is a mystery. The Mongols kept almost no records and all accounts are second and third hand. One said the old conqueror, now over sixty, had died of a fever, another in battle, my favorite is a captive Queen of the Tanguts concealed a piece of metal in her sexual organ and he lacerated his willy when ...you know... and he bled to death. Part of Genghis’ funeral cortege was a riderless horse with boots reversed, a symbol of a fallen leader handed down to the funerals of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. The tomb of the Genghis Khan has never been discovered. Forty horses were sacrificed at the gravesite for Genghis to use in the next world and later the guards killed all that witnessed the funeral and then killed themselves to keep the location a secret. Somewhere in Mongolia on the Burkhan Kaldun, the "Mountain of Power" venerated by the Mongols, Genghis is buried with treasures plundered from Bejing to Moscow. In 2001 a joint team from the University of Chicago and Ulan Bator claimed they may have found the tomb. Stay tuned.

1814- BRITISH TROOPS BURN WASHINGTON D.C.- A large British task force filled with veteran redcoats fresh from defeating Napoleon marched up from ships in Chesapeake Bay. With most of the US Army trying to invade Canada or on the Western frontier the only defense of America’s capitol was some scanty Maryland militia and a few beached Marines. Generals, the Secretary of War, President Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe all gallopied about in confusion barking orders. At noon at Bladensburg Maryland, the American force exchanged some gunfire with the British, then ran away. The U.S. Army and government ran so fast that the incident was nicknamed "The Bladensburg Races". President James Madison had to leave in such a hurry that his evening dinner was still on the table. British Admiral Cockburn said he: "mightily enjoyed Master Jimmy 's sherry."
First Lady Dolly Madison fled the White House but saved Gilbert Stuart's painting of George Washington, cut out of its frame with a penknife by her butler French John –Jean Pierre Sioussat. The Declaration of Independence was hidden under a front porch in Baltimore and the US Treasury hidden in a wagon at a solitary Maryland farm.
At 9:00PM Admiral George Cockburn, sat in the speakers chair in Congress and said to his laughing troops:" Well lads, what shall we do with this vile nest of Yankee democracy ?" "Burn it!" they cried. The redcoats set fire to Congress, the Presidents Mansion, the Navy Yard and marched 6 abreast in good order down Pennsylvania Ave. Around 11:30 PM Cockburn and his staff entered Mrs Suters Boarding House on 15th & Pennsylvania Ave. for a late supper. Cockburn blew out the candles on the dinner table, leaving the room illuminated by the bright glow of the burning city. He joked” THIS, is the light by which I prefer to eat.”
The humiliation unified American anger not unlike Pearl Harbor centuries later. It was no longer "Mr. Madison's War." On a Hudson riverboat author Washington Irving punched a man he saw laughing over the President's flight." The National Honor must be Avenged!" After the British troops withdrew the President's burned out mansion was hastily covered over with the paint that was most in supply, white. It was known as the White House thereafter.

1847 - Charlotte Bronte completed writing her novel "Jane Eyre".

1853 – Saratoga Springs hotel resort chef George Crum invented Potato Chips, or crisps.

1913- Congress okayed the creation of the Parcel Post system- UPS.

1939- Mr. Leslie Mitchell became the first British Television announcer.

1942- Walt Disney’s film Saludos Amigos received it’s world premiere in Rio De Janiero.

1951- Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. The film won the Grand Prize and first showed the world that Japanese Cinema was a new force in the filmworld.

1973- One month after Bruce Lee’s death his last film Enter The Dragon opened in the US to wild acclaim. It renewed interest in the late star and spawned the Chinese Martial Arts craze in the US.

1992-HURRICANE ANDREW rips through southern Florida. One a scale of one to five Andrew was a force 5 hurricane. One meteorologist watched his wind velocity measuring device rip off his roof and dance down the street.

1993- LAPD announced an investigation of pop star Michael Jackson for possible child molestation. The investigation never led to any indictments but the publicity tarnished his image. Equally damaging to his public image were revelations of his eccentric lifestyle, like his keeping chimps and mannequins around the house to talk to, and all the tap water and showers of his mansion spouting Evian water. Jackson was tried and acquitted of similar charges in 2005

1995- Microsoft's Windows 95 introduced.

1997- According to the 1984 James Cameron film The Terminator this was the day the Skynet computer system became self aware and began the War of the Day of Judgement.

Birthdays: French King Louis XVI, Gene Kelly, Keith Moon, Rick Springfield, Shelly Long, Sonny Jurgensen, Barbara Eden, Alphonse Mucha, Vera Miles, River Phoenix, Queen Noor of Jordan, Oscar Grillo

Roman Festival Volcanalia, to pray to Vulcan to prevent fires.
Feast Day of Saints Apollinaris and Saint Lupus

In Kyoto Japan this is the first day of the Fire Festival, when candles are placed at each statue in the Temple of the Eight Thousand Buddhas
In Swaziland it’s Umhlanga Day

1872- The first commercial ship ever sent from Japan arrived in San Francisco carrying tea.

1914- Japan declared war on Germany. World War One, not two. The Japanese wanted to annex the German held Chinese province of TsingTao, where the big brewery was.

1922- Irish IRA commander Michael Collins was ambushed and killed by other Irish guerillas while driving through his home county of Cork.

1926- Screen idol Rudolph Valentino died in a New York hospital of an infection due to a burst appendix and bleeding ulcer. Today this condition could be controlled by anti-biotics, but they weren’t invented yet. He was always sensitive about criticism that he was secretly gay. One close friend cameraman Paul Ivano said Rudy was not only not gay but when making love to his wife he was so err..exhuberant… she once passed out . Paul recalled Valentino appeared in his doorway naked and complained “ Paul, I think I’ve killed her!” Natasha Rambova, Valentino’s wife encouraged his public image of aggressive sexuality “Rudy looks best when he’s naked ”. But this didn’t fit into the American male’s self image of Tom Mix or William S. Hart, so the gay charge got under Rudy’s skin. One Chicago columnist called him a “Pink-Powder-Puff”. When Rudy came out of anesthesia still in great pain he muttered “So, how’s this for a Pink-Powder-Puff”? Then he died. He was only 30 years old. Women around the world went mad with grief. From L.A. to Budapest women committed suicide before his picture. In Japan two women jumped into a volcano.

1937- At the urging of the Stanford dean of engineering Bill Hewlett had his first meeting with David Packard. They called their company started out of their Palo Alto garage the Engineering Service Company. The Hewlett-Packard Company would one day be one of the biggest names in computers and their garage hailed as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

1939-THE NAZIS-SOVIET PACT. Nazi minister Von Ribbentrop flew to Moscow and signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. This cleared the way for Hitler's attack on Poland. Many in the west saw this as Stalin's untrustworthiness, but the Russians said they were reacting to the lack of enthusiasm shown by the Western Democracies in stopping Fascism. This was evident in Ethiopia, Czechoslovakia and particularly evident in Spain, where the Soviets backed the anti-Fascists to the hilt, with no help at all from the democracies. But Stalin was genuinely duped by Hitler; maybe through the political rhetoric Stalin imagined he saw a fellow opportunist demagogue. It was obvious to Uncle Joe that the strategy of the West was to try and push Germany and Russia into war, so why would Hitler be stupid enough to do it? Even two days before the Nazis Invasion of Russia Stalin refused to believe the reports of his spies that Hitler was going to betray him. Josef Stalin’s action for temporary tactical advantage destroyed the intellectual justification for Russia’s leadership of Global Communism. All though the 1920’s and 30’s Communism seemed to some the best hope of the Left for stopping the Fascist dictators and winning Civil and Labor rights. But when Moscow ordered all good Communists to stop criticizing Hitler they lost the sympathies of many progressives. Americans, Britons and Zionist Jews began to leave the party in droves.

1942-THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD BEGAN. As clouds of Nazi planes bombed the city to flaming rubble, the tanks of the Nazi 16th Panzer Division reached the Volga River and began to fight their way into the northern suburbs of the City of Stalingrad. The 16th’s General was one-armed Hans Huber, whom his men nicknamed Die Mensch- The Man! The Germans were met by elements of the Red Army mixed with marines and civilians driving new unpainted T-34 tanks fresh from their factories assembly line. An estimated 40,000 civilians died just in this first attack, as many as had died at Waterloo, and it was only the beginning. The German 6th Army attack stalled in the city center and the fighting went on until next February. Hitler was obsessed with the Stalingrad defeat and was still talking about it the day he died three years later in 1945.

1947-President Truman’s daughter Margaret gave her first public singing concert. President Truman spent the following day personally telephoning and threatening music critics who dared to give her harsh reviews.

1953- David Mullany of Shelton Conn. invented the Whiffle Ball. He did it to help his son who was lousy at throwing a curve ball.

1964- Twist and Shout! The Beatles played the Hollywood Bowl.

1994- Jeffrey Katzenburg announced he was leaving Disney.