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February 20th, 2009 fri.
February 20th, 2009

The First Symposium of nominated Animated Features was a big success. A sellout crowd heard me interview the directors of BOLT, KING FU PANDA and WALL-E. Thanks to all who made it happen, I had a great time.

You want this?Eh? you want this..?

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Question: In live action movies, why do you strike a set, when you take it down?

Yesterdays Quiz answered below: President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama plan a series of regular Weds night cocktail receptions at the White House. Who originated the idea?
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History for 2/20/2009
Birthdays: Honore' Daumier, Nancy Wilson, Ansel Adams, Sidney Poitier, Cindy Crawford, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robert Altman, Roger Penske. Phil Esposito, Jennifer O’Neill, Ivanna Trump, Mike Leigh, Lili Taylor

1258- The Mongol horde under Hulugau stormed Baghdad. They were ordered by Genghis Khan not to spill any royal blood so they took the last Caliph, Al Mostassim- Billah, rolled him in a blanket then galloped the Mongol Horde over him. Ouch. The beautiful city of the Arabian Nights was sacked and burned for 40 straight days. Chroniclers said 800,000 died and the streets ran with rivulets of liquid gold- melting from the gilded books in the burning libraries. To the Europeans who had just lost the Crusades, this new force from the East was first thought to be the armies of Prester John, the magical-mythical monk-king of Cathay. St. Louis of France even sent envoys for an alliance. But after word came of that northern pincer of the Mongol army had destroyed Budapest, Moscow, Kiev and Cracow they changed their minds. The knights of the west called them Tartars after the ancient Greek name for hell, Tartarus.

1702-British King William III goes riding around Hampton Court when his horse Sorrel steps in a molehole and threw him. William of Orange suffered a broken collarbone but being already elderly, tuberculant and asthmatic, died within a week. Friends of his enemy the exiled Stuart King James II drank a toast to the 'Little man in the velvet coat', meaning the mole who dug the hole.

1725- FIRST DOCUMENTED SCALPINGS- British militia scalped ten Indians in New Hampshire. Indians of the Eastern seaboard and Caribbean had done the practice before. Now colonial authorities encouraged allied tribes to bring in scalps as a way of proving how many of the enemy they had killed, before they were paid a cash bounty. Scalps soon became a fashionable novelty item in for sale in London. Tribes adopted different scalp cuts so you would know who did it -the Cheyenne preferred a diamond cut, Sioux an oval pattern.

1816- "Fee-Garr-Row! Fig-Ar- Roww- Figaro-Figaro,Figaro,Figaro"- Giacomo Rossini's opera 'The Barber of Seville' premiered. Rossini endured bad press and heavy criticism at the time because the another opera of the Marriage of Figaro had just been premiered by Paisiello, an inferior composer who was much more popular than he.

1845- The Battle of the Cahuenga Pass-Angry Spanish Californians led by ranchero Juan de Alvarado clashed with the regular Mexican governor Miguel de Micheltorena. The only casualty was a mule. The story of Alvarado may be one of the origins of Zorro.

1925- Willis O’Brien’s silent movie the Lost World premiered. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes issued in a new era of special effects films.

1936- The film “Follow the Fleet” with Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers premiered.

1939- The American Nazi Party held their largest rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City. 20,000 Americans goose-stepped and Sieg-Heiled under a huge portrait of George Washington, while angry anti-Fascist and Jewish groups rioted outside. By 1941 most of the German American Bund dissolved. During the war 10,000 German Americans were interned along with the Japanese and Italians. Fritz Kuhn, the organizer of the rally was jailed for embezzling his organizations funds and deported to Germany in 1946

1962- "God Go with You, John Glenn !" Mercury -7 sends the first American into orbit.
Glenn later became a Democratic senator and in his 70’s went into space a second time on a space shuttle in 1998. His first words upon emerging from the space capsule were:”It was hot in there.” John Glenn was a combat Marine pilot, test pilot and astronaut but even he sometimes got the willies. In 1968 while traveling with the Robert Kennedy for President entourage their chartered plane hit turbulence. Bobby Kennedy undid his seat belt, stood up and said to the cabin “ I have an announcement- Colonel Glenn is Scared!”

1980- Bon Scott, vocalist for the band AC/DC, was found dead in a friend’s automobile choked in his own vomit.

1986- The Soviets launch the first permanent orbiting space station, Mir, which means Peace. After a long career in which 7 US astronauts among many others spent time there in 2001 it finally was brought down to burn up in orbit.

2006- The animated film Wallace & Gromet: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, won the British Academy Award (BAFTA) for the best British Film of the year. It beat out the Constant Gardner, and Pride & Prejudice.
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Yesterdays Question: President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama plan a series of regular Weds night cocktail receptions at the White House. Who originated the idea?

Answer: First Lady Dolly Madison in 1805. President Madison was a low-key bookish type. Modern scholars liken him to a Bill Gates of the quill-pen set. Dolly thought these informal weds night mixers would be a way for powerful congressmen to mingle and she could build a constituency for her husband.


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