Interesting tidbits: NOTE: Today is Toy Soldier Day. 1882 – Britains first electric trams run in east London. 1890 – The longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland, measuring 1,710 feet / 520 m long, is opened by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. 1917 – Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first female member of the US House of Representatives. 1918 – The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic. 1918 – The USS Cyclops departs from Barbados and is never seen again, presumably lost with all hands in the Bermuda Triangle. Todays birthday crew: 1792 – Samuel Slocum, American inventor of the stapler. 1876 – Theodore Hardeen, Hungarian-American magician and escape artist who was the younger brother of Harry Houdini. Hardeen, who usually billed himself as the brother of Houdini, was the founder of the Magicians Guild. Hardeen was the first magician to conceive escaping from a submerged straitjacket in full view of the audience, rather than behind a curtain. 1877 – Garrett Morgan, African American inventor whose most notable inventions included a type of protective respiratory hood (or gas mask) and a traffic signal. He is renowned for a heroic rescue in 1916 in which he and three others used his safety hood device to save workers trapped in a water intake tunnel being dug under Lake Erie after a natural gas explosion and fire which took the lives of workers and the first police officers and firefighters who attempted to rescue them. He is also credited as the first African American in Cleveland, Ohio, to own an automobile. 1895 – Milt Gross, American illustrator, cartoonist, and animator. His work is noted for its exaggerated cartoon style and Yiddish-inflected English dialogue. He originated the non-sequitur Banana Oil! as a phrase deflating pomposity and posing. His character Count Screwlooses admonition, Iggy, keep an eye on me!, became a national catch phrase. The National Cartoonists Society fund to aid indigent cartoonists and their families for many years was known as the Milt Gross Fund. 1895 – Shemp Howard, American actor and one of the original Three Stooges. 1932 – Ed Big Daddy Roth, American artist, cartoonist, pinstriper and custom car designer and builder who created the hot-rod icon Rat Fink and other extreme characters. Roth was a key figure in Southern Californias Kustom Kulture and hot-rod movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. 1957 – Ron Fassler, American actor best known for his role as Bryan Grazer, the LAPD captain in the Fox Network science fiction TV series Alien Nation. The series was canceled after a short run, but Fox brought it back in 1994 in a series of five TV movies. Ron reprised his role as Captain Grazer in Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994), Alien Nation: Body and Soul (1995), Alien Nation: Millennium (1996), Alien Nation: The Enemy Within (1996), and Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy (1997). 1962 – Simon Bisley, English illustrator and comics artist best known for his 1990s work on ABC Warriors, Lobo, and Sláine. His style, reliant on paints, acrylics, inks and multiple-mediums, is strongly influenced by Frank Frazetta, Bill Sienkiewicz, Gustav Klimt, Salvador Dalí, Egon Schiele, and Richard Corben. He also took inspiration from rock album covers and graffiti as well as traditional comics art. In turn he and his work inspired various forms in media, including the Beast in the 2006 Doctor Who episode The Satan Pit, and Simon Peggs character graphic artist Tim Bisley on the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced. 1977 – Dan Wells, American horror and science fiction author. In 2011, Wells was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Happy birthday guys!
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 12:21:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015