Just remember:

Grim Natwick the creator of Betty Boop lived to be 100 years old. John Randolph Bray the inventor of the animation studio system died at 107, Friz Freleng lived to 89, Chuck Jones lived to 89, Bill Hanna to 90, Joe Barbera is still around at 94. In the mean time the inventor of the Power Bar died at 52 and the inventor of jogging died at 58.


Moral? Wanna live long? SIT ON YOUR ASS AND ANIMATE!


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Birthdays: Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, Salladin, Brian Epstein, "Momma" Cass Elliot, Dr. Ferry Porsche- inventor of the Porsche race car, Twiggy – real name Leslie Hornby, Leon Jaworski, William Golding author of The Lord of the Flies, Adam West is 78, Frances Farmer, David McCallum, Duke Snyder, Mike Royko, Scar voice Jeremy Irons, Jimmy Fallon is 32, Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin.

1580- The family of Miguel de Cervantes ransomed the writer from the Barbary Pirates. He wrote Don Quixote de la Mancha in 1604.

1692- One of the only men convicted in the Salem Witch Trials was executed. Pilgrim Giles Corey had a wooden board laid on top of him and his neighbors piled large stones on top until he was squished to death. At one point his tongue was sticking so grotesquely out of his head that the magistrate pushed it back in with the tip of his cane.

1783- Jacques Montgolfier launches the first hot air balloon in Paris. The first aeronauts were a sheep, duck and rooster. Montgolfier made his fortune in paper. To this day if you get some high quality stationary with a balloon and French flag in the watermark that is Papier Canson et Montgolfier, his company.

1827- Fight at the Vidalia Sandbar- Famous Mississippi gamblers brawl in which Jim Bowie uses his famous knife to carve up a gang of sore losers who shoot him twice. The Bowie knife may not have been designed by Jim Bowie but by his brother Rezin Bowie, who wanted an intimidating toothpick to brandish after he almost died in an earlier altercation. The Bowie knife was the Saturday night special of the early nineteenth century. In Brahm Stoker's Dracula, Van Helsing doesn't kill the count with a wooden stake but with a Bowie knife.

1864- Battle of Winchester- General Phil Sheridan's Yankees whup Jubal Early's Confederates. The feisty son of an Irish ditch digger, Abe Lincoln called Sheridan "A runty little man with a bullet shaped head and not enough neck to hang him." But he proved his value today. He rode fearlessly down the battle line shouting to his men:" Pour it into them boys! Knock every sonofabitch down before you !" One sonofabitch killed was Confederate General George S. Patton, the grandfather of the World War Two general.
Sheridan's army had no less than three future U.S. presidents on staff- Gen.James Garfield, Gen. Rutherford Hayes and Major William McKinley.

1876- Melvin Bissell of Grand Rapids Michigan invented his carpet sweeper.

1926- THE BIG ONE- Miami Florida was destroyed by a huge Hurricane. The storm stopped for a time the runaway boom in land investment then all the rage in South Florida. SnowBirds up north invested millions in land that turned out to be swamps . The Marx Brothers poked fun at the craze in their 1929 film Cocoanuts. As Groucho said:” Florida Folks. Sunshine, Sunshine , now let’s get the auction started before there is a tornado.”

1931- The Marx Brothers comedy “ Monkey Business” premiered.

1936- Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald record “Indian Love Call”. When I’m Calling You, Oooh-ohhoohhh, Ohhhh-ohhh-oohhhhhhh”, etc.

1945- Little Shirley Temple, now all grown up, married actor John Agar, who she met on the set of John Ford's film Fort Apache. The RKO studio turned the marriage into a media circus by inviting 12,000 people. John Ford teased Agar mercilessly, calling him Mr. Temple. John and Shirley divorced within two years. Shirley Temple did a few more small roles, remarried and became a diplomat and John Agar went on to star in a number of sci-fi flicks like 'Tarantula", The Brain from Planet Aurous" and built his own theme dinosaur park by an Arkansas freeway "John Agar's House of Kong'.

1945- Klaus Fuchs, a spy in the British delegation member of the Los Alamos Atomic bomb program, delivered the plans of the plutonium 'Nagasaki" bomb to a courier for Soviet intelligence in Moscow.

1955- Juan Peron the President of Argentina was overthrown in a military coup.

1961- This is the night Betty and Barney Hill claimed they were picked up by a flying saucer and experimented on. It is one of the more famous abduction stories because it holds up under hypnosis. Hey, what are you planning to do with that anal probe?


1970- The Mary Tyler Moore TV Show premiered.

1995- Orville Reddenbacher 'the Popcorn king' died.