I heard from my old friend Prof Kelly Loosli of BYU that John Ahern has passed away. He was fighting leukemia and died at the age of 76.
Kelly wrote:

John had an amazing career in animation starting at Disney on Sleeping Beauty and Lady and the Tramp and going on up through Jungle Book. After his time at Disney he worked for Hannah and Barbera working in varying capacities for the studio and overseeing animation in the US, Japan, and Korea. John taught for a year in the animation program at BYU. He made a huge impact on the students and faculty and will be deeply missed.

I recall John Ahern as a layout artist and producer. I worked with John at Hanna & Barbera on Godzilla, Superfriends and Yogi's Space Race, Ruby Spears on Rubik the Amazing Cube and at Filmation on Brave Starr. You can check his IMDB page for his full credits. John was a gentle, softspoken man and great artist with a good humor and a ready smile. He will be missed.



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Question: Is it true Fanta sodapop was invented by the Nazis?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: On a political show tonight, one pundit joked “ Have you seen Goldstein?” It’s from a famous book. What does that mean?
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History for 11/2/2008
Birthdays: Daniel Boone, Pres. James Knox Polk, Jean Chardin, Luchino Visconti, Giusseppi Sinopoli, Burt Lancaster, Ray Walston, Pat Buchanan, Steve Ditko, Ray Walston, Stephanie Powers- remember the Girl from U.N.C.L.E.?, k.d.lang, David Schwimmer

Today is Dio de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It derives from the Aztecs, who believed the life you are living now is a dream, when you die, you awake to your real life.

1483- OFF WITH HIS HEAD! Whether you believe Shakespeares’ portrayal of King Richard III as a hunchback usurper or modern revisionist scholars who call him a maligned monarch, this day Richard III shows his friend the Duke of Buckingham how much he appreciated his help in becoming king, by cutting his head off.

1541- Archbishop Thomas Cranmer handed King Henry VIII a spy’s report that his hot young wife Queen Catherine Howard was getting-it-on with at least three other men.

1904- London newspaper The Daily Mirror first published.

1917- Britain passed the Balfour Declaration, calling for a national home for Jews in Palestine. Sit Arthur Balfour was the British Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George. Britain once considered Uganda and Argentina for a Jewish homeland before settling on Palestine, then a sleepy border province of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Balfour had the powerful former prime minister Robert Lord Salisbury as his uncle. No matter how his fortunes rose or waned his uncle ensured his career path was steady. This originated the English slang term for having good connections:” So Bobs’ yer uncle.”

1920- The first US Radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began the nation’s first broadcasting with news of election results.

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Halie Selassie Ist, Ethiopian Emperor. The Jamaican movement Rastafarians are named for him.

1932- Young star Katherine Hepburn first shines in the film A Bill of Divorcement, co- starring with John Barrymore.

1937- Laguardia Airport opened. New York City’s first municipal airport.

1944- RAOUL WALLENBURG- The Jewish population of Budapest was driven off to Nazi concentration camps, but not after Swedish envoy Raoul Wallenberg saved over a thousand by granting Swedish (neutral) passports to them. Wallenberg once walked alongside an SS officer ordered to execute 25 people and pleaded for each person as they were shot. The SS officer finally tired of Wallenburgs pleas and spared the last two. When Wallenburg’s aide asked him “What good did all that begging do?” He replied: “What Good? We just saved two human lives!” When Hungary was conquered by the Red Army Raul Wallenburg was arrested and died in one of Stalin's gulag prison camps. Russia didn’t officially admit this until 1991.

1947- Howard Hughes pilots his monster wooden airplane, the "Spruce Goose" for it's only test flight, one minute over Long Beach Harbor. Two hundred tons, Eight engines, a wingspan longer than a football field, it was conceived as an aid to win World War Two but was completed long after it ended.

1950- Writer George Bernard Shaw died at 94. His last words were:" Oh well, it will be a new experience anyway."

1964- CBS television purchased the NY Yankees Baseball club. This is one of the dumber business deals in entertainment history. CBS thought they were buying the world champion Murderers Row team, if they had done their research they would have known most the Yankee top stars including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra were scheduled to retire. Within a year of the deal the Yankees went from first to last place, and played bad until George Steinbrenner bought them in 1977.

1983- Yielding to nationwide lobbying from the African American community President Ronald Reagan created the Martin Luther King holiday in January. Arizona was the last state to officially celebrate the holiday.
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Yesterday’s Question: On a political show tonight, one pundit joked “ Have you seen Goldstein?” It’s from a famous book. What does that mean?

Answer: Goldstein is the Evil Opponent of Big Brother, from George Orwell's book on futuristic tyranny-1984. No one knows if he is even alive, but he is the declared focus of every patriotic citizen’s Two Minutes of Hate.