BACK to Blog Posts

January 7th, 2007 Sunday
January 7th, 2007

Birthdays: Jacques Montgolfier- balloonist and paper maker, Joseph Bonaparte- Napoleons older brother, St. Bernadette of Lourdes, Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam, Francois Poulenc, Butterfly McQueen, Adolph Zukor, cartoonist Charles Adams, E.L. Doctorow , Jean Pierre Rampal, Millard Filmore*, Katie Couric, William Peter Blatty the author of Jaws, David Caruso, Nicholas Cage- originally Nicolo Coppola is 43

HAPPY MILLARD FILLMORE DAY!! Millard Fillmore is famous, if you could call it that, as Americas most obscure and irrelevant president. So far. This day the Millard Filmore Society has a banquet in his birthplace of Buffalo, N.Y.
George W. who..?

1839- Frenchman Louis Daguerre announces the invention of Photography.( Just three weeks later on the 31st William Fox Talbot will say HE invented it first ). Despite the controversy of credit, the Daguerrotype photgraphic process becomes the popular system worldwide in the nineteenth century. The image of Lincoln on the five dollar bill is from a daguerreotype.

1894-" The Sneeze" The first motion picture film to be copyrighted by Thomas Edison and his engineer Canadian W.K.L. Dickson


1924- George Gershwin completed his Rhapsody for Jazz Orchestra, popularly called the Rhapsody in Blue. Ira Gershwin came up with the name after seeing a museum show of Whistler paintings with names like "Composition in Grey, Nocturne in Green," etc. It was comissioned by famed band leader Paul Whiteman, who gave Billie Holiday and Bing Crosby their starts. A retired band member of his I knew told me Whiteman had no sense of tempo nor could he carry a beat, and as a band member you quickly learned to play your part while ignoring his baton waving.

1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1927- The first private telephone call from America to England.

1929-With the approval of Edgar Rice Burroughs artist Hal Foster began drawing the Tarzan comic strip. Burne Hogarth took over after Foster had a financial dispute with the publisher.

1934 –The First Buck Rogers adventures.

1935- Roger Sherwood’s play the Petrified Forrest opened to smash revues at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway. Leslie Howard got great notices, but the real find was an obscure hard drinking actor with sad eyes playing the gangster Duke Mantee – Humphrey Bogart. In the audience was Jack Warner of Warner Bros, who decided Mr Bogart might just make it in motion pictures.

1943- Nikolas Tesla died. The inventor of AC current, rotary field motors and the Tesla coil, in his last years he had been experimenting with telegraphy and trying to develop a death ray for the US Army.

1961- In Providence Rhode Island a bunch of kids were stopped by police for driving a round a neighborhood store suspiciously carrying guns and masks. One 21 year old who did three days in jail for carrying a concealed weapon later became a pretty good actor- Al Pacino.

1966- A San Francisco hippie band called the Grateful Dead got their first gig playing a club called the Matrix. They would be one of the most successful rock bands in history, only breaking up after the death of their leader Jerry Garcia in 1995.


RSS