SANDY KOZEL

The winners from the 1st Academy Awards.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 1927 and
1928 and took place on May 16, 1929 during a private dinner held at the
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, California. AMPAS president
Douglas Fairbanks hosted the show.

Only 270 guests attended the ceremony that took just 15 minutes.

Douglas Fairbanks presents Janet Gaynor with the
first Academy Award for Best Actress, for her work
in Seventh Heaven. 

Emil Jannings with the first ever Academy Award “Oscar”.

William C. Demille, President Of The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts
And Sciences hands an Oscar to Mary Pickford (with Warner Baxter
and Hans Kraly looking on) at the first ceremony in 1929.

CARLATA BRADLEY

John Glenn made space history on this day in 1962 when he orbited
the Earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first
American to do so. He was aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury
capsule (above).

Here’s what John Glenn saw while orbiting the Earth. 

Friendship 7 capsule after splashdown.

The successful mission concluded with a splashdown and recovery
in the Atlantic Ocean, 800 miles southeast of Bermuda.

Sir Sidney Poitier is 92-years-old today.

Actor, director, and diplomat Sidney Poitier became the first
African American to win an Oscar after performing in Lilies
of the Field (1963). The films Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
(1967) To Sir, with Love (1967) and In the Heat of the Night
(1967), additionally bolstered his fame. The American Film
Institute called him one of the 25 Greatest Male Stars of All
Time in 1999.

1961

TV movie, 2001

ED DANAHUE

Thomas Edison gave his first public demonstration of incandescent lighting to an audience in Menlo Park, NJ. on this day in 1879.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company ran special trains to Menlo Park on the
day of the demonstration in response to public enthusiasm over the event.

Although the first incandescent lamp had been produced 40 years earlier, no inventor had been able to come up with a practical design until Edison, after
countless tests, developed a high-resistance carbon-thread filament that
burned steadily for hours and an electric generator sophisticated enough to
power a large lighting system.

Thomas Edison’s greatest contribution to the modern industrial world came
from his work in electricity. He acquired 1,093 patents in his lifetime and
died in 1931 at the age of 84.

The 1879-Thomas-Edison -Longines-Wittnauer-
Bronze-Commemorative-Medal.

Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins is 81 years old today.

Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins is best known for his portrayal
of the ingenious serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence
of the Lambs (1991), a role that won him the Academy Award
for Best Actor. He has also played roles in The Mask of Zorro 
(1998), and Nixon (1995). He turned to TV in 2016 upon landing
a starring role on HBO’s Westworld.

Anthony Hopkins portraying Hannibal Lecter from The Silence
of the Lambs.

ROSS SIMPSON

On this day in 1978, Cult leader Jim Jones and hundreds of his
followers died in a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana
in South America. It was the largest mass suicide in modern
history and resulted in the largest single loss of American
civilian life in a non-natural disaster until September 11, 2001.

Shown are bodies of members of the Peoples Temple who died
after their leader Jim Jones ordered them to drink Flav-R-Aid
laced with cyanide. 

Congressman Leo Ryan (above) was among five killed by Temple members at the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip (below).

The first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon premiered
in New York on this day in 1928. It was Walt Disney’s "Steamboat
Willie," starring Mickey Mouse.

Walt Disney drawing “Steamboat Willie”.