ASIFA-Hollywood and the Animation Educator's forum is putting together the first animation festival for STUDENTS. We have an incredible event planned with film screenings, awards presentations and panels relating to getting a job in the animation industry with professional artists from major studios in attendance (Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney etc.)



There is also an all day portfolio review that I hope you can all take advantage of. We will be having a rotation of industry artists help out with advising and reviewing your portfolio. Even if you have never put a portfolio together before, scan and print your drawings/paintings and bring them. Reviews will be given to first come first serve. To get on the list, please contact Veronica Esquivel - vesquivel@aii.edu or 714.338.1351 and book your time!


The ASIFA-Hollywood
Student Animation Festival
October 18th, 2008
Admission FREE to the animation community
Woodbury University
School of Business / Fletcher Jones Foundation Theater
7500 Glenoaks Bl
Burbank, CA 91510
(Click for printable map)


It will be a great opportunity to network, be educated, and watch some great films.

See you there!

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Quiz: It is said the economy is in the Doldrums. What does that mean?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: The Warner Bros. were originally Polish Jews who immigrated via Canada. What was their original family name?
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History for 9/25/2008
Birthdays: William Faulkner, Jean Phillipe Rameau, Mark Rothko, Dmitri Shoshtakovich, Sergei Bondarchuk, Phil Rizzutto the Scooter, Bob MacAdoo, Heather Locklear, Scotty Pippin, Christopher Reeve, Mark Hamill, Glen Gould, Barbera Walters, Red Smith, Aldo Ray, Will Smith is 40, Michael Douglas 64 & Catherine Zeta-Jones-39

1513- Vasco Nunez de Balboa emerged from the Panamanian rainforest to view the great expanse of the western ocean. He calls it "Pacific" the "Peaceful Ocean."

1690- The first American newspaper published in Boston; " Publick Occurances Both Foreign and Domestick, Issue Number One" There was no number two because the Lord Governor of Massachusetts colony promptly closed it down.

1777- British Lord Howe after defeating Washington's army, CAPTURED THE AMERICAN CAPITOL OF PHILADELPHIA. The rebel congress had picked up their upstart Declaration of Independence, and hightailed it for Harrisburg.
It was the American's luck that at this time the colonies were so loosely knit and decentralized that losing the "nation's capitol" wasn't very important to anyone except Philadelphians. Town Loyalists had a field day routing out rebel sympathizers. Because the Quakers espoused non-violence everyone thought they were on the other side, so they were singled out for especially rough treatment- pelted with stones, tar & feathers, etc.
Lord Howe complained to London that by now he had defeated the American army several times, captured it's capitol, yet the Rebellion showed no signs of dying out. America only had four major cities, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston. They all had been captured by His Majesties forces at one time or another. Except for little pirate John Paul Jones, they had sunk all of the American Navy. But the damn Yankees wouldn’t give up. Obviously a military solution to the American problem was not the answer." I can only pacify the colonies if I had two soldiers for every colonist." London responded by replacing Lord Howe.

1789- James Madison proposed a series of ten amendments be added to the new Constitution guaranteeing basic personal freedoms, the BILL OF RIGHTS. This day it was approved by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

1828- Simon Bolivar the Liberator is confronted by assassins sent by his own vice president to kill him. They break in on him while he was in bed with his mistress, Manuela Spenz. Bolivar does not fight nor flee, he just stared them down, and the sheer force of his iron will compelled the cutthroats to flee in terror.

1887-The first Sears Catalog published.

1888- The beginning of the Sherlock Holmes adventure the Hound of the Baskervilles.

1890- Spurred on by the writings of John Muir and John Wesley Powell, Congress created Yosemite National Park in California.

1919- President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke after a speech at Pueblo, Colorado. For two months he lingered paralyzed while the nation was run by first lady Edith Wilson. No one told the public or the Vice President. Their are many interpretations of how the government was run in those weeks. Edith claimed to be passing on Wilson's wishes to the government from his sickbed, but many thought Wilson was too incapacitated even for that, and she was just doing it herself.

1953- Alfred Hitchcock wrapped filming on his only 3D film, Dial M for Murder.

1965- The Beatles cartoon show premiered.

1974- THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT. Scientists first warn that increased use of florocarbons and aerosol sprays will cause Ozone Depletion and global weather changes.
But that’s not proven, eh Boys & Girls? Oh, it’s 101 degrees in my neighborhood today.

1980- John Bonham of Led Zeppelin was found dead of alcohol poisoning.

1984-THE RUBBERHEADS STRIKE- Disneyland workers including the actors who stroll the park in big Mickey and Goofy heads go on strike.
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Yesterday’s Question: The Warner Bros. were originally Polish Jews who immmigrated via Canada. What was their original family name?

Answer: The Warner Bros original name was Eichelbaum. I guess they felt Eichelbaum Bros. doesn't have quite the same ring. (Thanks to Mark Mayerson for the answer.)

One more interesting fact. When I worked at WB, they made a point of telling
me, it's never Warner Brothers, it's always Warner Bros.

Question: The Warner Bros. were originally Jews who emigrated from Poland to America, via Canada. What was their original family name?

Quiz: Some political writers are called pundits. What is a pundit?
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History for 9/24/2008
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Vitellius, Duke Albrecht Wallenstein, First US 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

1789- Congress passes the First Judiciary Act, which calls for an Attorney General
and a Supreme Court. John Jay was first Chief Justice. When Washington formed the
first cabinet Thomas Jefferson asked if he could be Attorney General as well as
Secretary of State, because representing a little country with no foreign policy
was boring and had nothing to do.

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 labeled a financial dunce by Washington society.

1934- Frank Thomas’s first day as a Walt Disney Animator. His last was in 1978.

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. The Grand Slam.

1941- This day the Japanese Consul in Honolulu was instructed by the Imperial War
Ministry to quietly begin gathering information about the US Fleet in Pearl Harbor.

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.”

1953-UPA's "Unicorn in the Garden" directed by Bill Hurtz, based on
the cartoon style 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 a very young John Wayne,
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 "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!
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Some political writers are called pundits. What is a pundit?

Answer: Pundit comes from Pandit, a Sanskrit word that means “ the learned”. English
lawmakers in colonial India would employ a native Indian legal adviser who was expert in regional laws and customs. He would be called a pandit. The fist president of India was referred to as Pandit Jawaharl Nehru.

Lately some good friends are being heaped with glory, so I thought I'd add my personal paeans of triumph!

Congratulations to Karl Cohen of ASIFA/ San Francisco for being given the ASIFA/Laureate Award at the Ottawa Animation Festival!



Karl said he had fun hanging out on the Rideau Canal with John Canemaker, Dick Williams, Jerry Beck and Linda Simensky.

My old boss Dick Williams was honored at the Ottawa Festival and later will go to New York and be the subject of a evening in his honor at the Museum of Modern Art!

Well Done, Mr Egg & Chips!

Gloria en Excelsis, Vivat, Slava, Mazeltov and all that kinda stuff!
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Quiz: Some political writers are called pundits. What is a pundit?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Animation fans, Who was Arthur Q. Bryant?
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History for 9/23/2008
Birthdays: Euripides-484BC, early feminist Victoria Woodhull, Walter Lippmann, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Mickey Rooney is 88, Julio Inglesias, Bruce Springsteen, Walter Pidgeon, Louise Nevelson, Jason Alexander, Mary Kay Place, Harry Connick Jr.

480BC- On this same day in 480 BC- Glycon of Syracuse defeated the huge Carthaginian host of Hamilcar and saved Sicily for Greece. Hamilcar spent the battle burning up animal sacrifices to the Gods for good omens. When he saw he was losing Hamilcar threw himself on the fire. Not a bad solution because Carthage’s tradition was to crucify generals who lost battles.

1642- The first commencement ceremony at Harvard College.

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 and called aloud "Sir, 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 Jone's ship! Launnay hoped that by helping kill Jones, he could then finish off the Briton and take all the credit for the victory. Despite this curious strategy, John Paul Jones kept fighting. He personally ran over to a ten pounder cannon whose crew had been killed, 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 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 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. 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. And to make matters worse,General George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Lafayette were riding over for breakfast !
Benedict Arnold escaped to the HMS Vulture waiting down river, while his wife Peggy stalled Gen. Washington and party in their 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!". 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 part of 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.

1908- NY Giants batter Fred Merkle hit the winning run in a pennant game with the Chicago Cubs. But in running the bases he neglected to touch second base so his run was disallowed and the game was declared a tie. They replayed the game the following day and the Cubs won the pennant. Thereafter Merkle's nickname became Bonehead Merkle.

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.

1952- The "CHECKERS" SPEECH- Young Senator Richard Nixon saved his career as Eisenhower's running mate by going on nationwide T.V. and explaining away allegations of accepting improper gifts while a congressman. Included is a dog "checkers" for his kids. "He’s a good dog, and we’re gonna keep him.""My wife doesn't own a mink coat, she has a good Republican cloth-coat." Eisenhower was close to dumping the embattled senator from the ticket but the popular outcry of support after this speech but Nixon back on top. In effect he four-walled Ike into keeping him on the ticket. When Eisenhower was asked in 1960 "Can you name one thing Vice President Nixon did for your administration?" Ike glibly replied:" Boys, gimme a week to think of something and I'll get back to you."

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. And Paul Newman started making salad dressing.

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. Until it’s dismantling in 2002 it had been the chief money generator of the Disney corporation for years.
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Yesterday’s Question: Animation fans, Who was Arthur Q. Bryant?

Answer: " I'm hunting wabbitts! Huh-huh,huh huhh." Bryant was the original voice of Elmer Fudd. He was also a regular on the hit radio show, Fibber McGee and Molly.

courtesy Jed Cline

Pat and I took some time on a nice Sunday to go visit the LA Natural History Museum. It was built in 1889, and the name Natural History Museum is a bit of a misnomer. Since there was never an actual Museum of the City of Los Angeles, it has a lot of extra goodies thrown in like an old curio cabinet. Sure we've seen dinosaur bones and stuffed Mastodons and such, but also Thomas Jeffersons' overcoat, and one of Lincoln't stovepipe hats. The German artist who poses dead bodies, Fra Junpiero Serra's letters, Items from the Mexican War,tickets to the 1932 Olympics.

Click this thumb and it is Walt Disney's original camera stand, that they used to photograph Steamboat Willie (1928). Walt donated it to the museum in 1938.



They also had artifacts from the first stop-motion dinosaur movie 1926 The Lost World, and illustrations by Charles Knight, the art director of King Kong.



Outside you can stroll the rose garden with over 15,000 bushes. It was built in 1927 to replace an earlier horse racing track.

The grudgingly small amount of movie memorabilia to represent a city world famous as the movie capitol, is symptomatic of an old split between Hollywood and Downtown Culture. There was a Old-Society Downtown attitude that refuses to admit such a thing as the movie business was even there, much less vital for the cities greatness. While in Hollywood, Burbank,the Sunset Strip, Beverly Hills and Studio City, there is a complete apathy as to what goes on in the Downtown LA area. Like the LA city skyline exists only to give the local Eyewitness News anchor a pretty backdrop. It was fun to see in the films LA Confidential and Dragnet, but who actually goes there?
If I didn't teach at USC downtown, maybe I would never visit either.

This rivalry was there in the 1920s, and I think lives on. Over the years I've seen the LA City Council, regardless of political party, spend millions and millions on new sports complexes and convention centers to try to get people to visit downtown, while Hollywood Blvd decays like Times Sq in New York once did. Yet Downtown on weekends you can still hear the echo of your own shoes in the corridors of these new complexes, while throngs of foreign tourists continue to shuffle past Hollywood & Vine's boarded up storefronts, rubbing elbows with crackheads and homeless vagrants. A local program once dedicated a half hour to the incredulous question: Why is the intersection of Hollywood & Vine so famous?"

I heard an interview with the editor of Fodor's Tourist Guidebooks for the USA. He expressed an opinion about this argument that I sums up the outside world's attitude nicely. "Build all the convention centers you want, no one gives a damn about seeing your downtown! When tourists around the world think of visiting LA, they think of Hollywood, Disneyland and the Beaches." I think that's a lesson local politicos are yet to learn.

As for the LA Natural History Museum, a way I hope they never totally renovate the old place. It's an attitude frozen in time. It's chaotic order is a kind of throwback to museums of the past. The lack of corporate slickness is it's charm.

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Question: Animation fans, Who was Arthur Q. Bryant?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: We know that the birth of the Internet was a communication between UCLA and Stanford in 1969. What was that first message?
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history for 9/22/2008
Birthdays: Anne of Cleves 1515- Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins, Mafioso Joe Valachi, Michael Farraday, Meryl Streep, John Houseman, Joanie Jett, Erich Von Stronheim, Tom Lasorda, Paul Muni, Debbie Boone, Scott Baio, John Woo is 60

1692- Seven witches hanged in Salem, Mass. When the daughter of the Royal Governor of the Massachusetts Colony was accused the Governor finally stepped in and stopped the madness. He overturned the decisions of the Salem court and ordered it's disbandment. These were the last witch executions in America.

1761- King George III’s coronation in London. 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.

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 second by a man named Bill Sipple. In the subsequent media attention Sipple was outed as a gay man and his career was damaged. “I can’t see what my sexual orientation had to do with saving the President’s life!”

1976- TV show Charlie’s Angels premiered.

1979-Hanna Barbera's Super Globetrotter's Show, featuring Multi-Man, Sphere Man, Gizmo-Man,Spaghetti-Man and Fluid-Man.
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yesterday’s question: We know that the birth of the Internet was a communication between UCLA and Stanford in 1969. What was that first message?

Answer: UCLA wrote “LOG” and Stanford answered: “ IN”. UCLA Program director Leonard Kleinrock recalled: You will find in my logbook, the first breath of the Internet. Oct. 29th 1969 at 10:00PM- “Talked to SRI (Stanford Research Institute). Message received.”

Question: We know that the birth of the Internet was a communication between UCLA and Stanford in 1969. What was that first message?

Yesterday's Question answered below: Who said " Go West, young man!"?
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History for 9/21/2008
Birthdays: Louis Joliet as in the French explorers Marquette and Joliet, Chuck Jones, Gustav Holst, H.G. Wells, Stephen King, Bill Murray is 58, Cecil Fielder, Rob Morrow, Larry Hagman, Ricky Lake, Fanny Flagg, Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers is 51, Leonard Cohen not one of the Coen Brothers, Faith Hill, Jerry Bruckheimer, Nicole Richie is 27

1769- MAYER ROTHSCHILD, a dealer in antique coins and furniture in the ghetto of Frankfurt, set up his first bank. He was soon managing the Elector of Hesse's income from selling mercenary soldiers, the Hessians, to Britain to fight the American Revolution. Mayer and his sons built the Rothschild financial empire. Rothschild banks lent the British Empire the money to buy the Suez Canal project from the Khedive of Egypt, they built the first European railroads, and you all know the reputation of wines like Chateau Mouton Rothschild, named for the street Louis Rothschild's house was on, the Rue Mouton. Every baby in the family is born worth $62 million dollars, then it's uphill from there. Last week, a Rothschild heiress supporting John McCain accused Obama of being too elitist. Uh-huh...?

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. In 1932 Technicolor's creator, Dr.Herbert Kalmus, signed an exclusive deal with Walt Disney so his cartoons showed other studios how bright and beautiful his colors could be.

1945- Disney short "Hockey Homicide" the first Sport-Goofy directed by Jack Kinney.

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.

1957- General Rudolph Ivanovich Abel, the KGB's top spy in the U.S. for ten years, was arrested in New York. Abel was a master at devising ingenious ways to conceal microfilm, using secret spaces in rusty bolts, shaving brushes and fountain pens. Abel served four years in prison but in 1962 was exchanged for downed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.

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.

1981- President Ron The Gipper Reagan appointed Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

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 the conversation down.
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Question: Who first said “Go West, Young Man”?

Answer: NY Tribune newspaper editor Horace Greeley in 1865. Actually, a guy named John Soule said it earlier in Terra Haute Indiana, but Greeley is the one who popularized it. When exhausted Civil War vets wondered to do next amid the ruins, Greeley declared “ Go West Young Man, and grow up with the country!” It became the mantra for western expansion.