The 1st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, honored the best films of 1927 and 1928 and 
took place on May 16, 1929 at a private dinner held at the Hollywood
Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The academy’s president
Douglas Fairbanks hosted the show. Tickets cost $5 and 270 people
attended the event. The presentation ceremony lasted 15 minutes. The
Awards were created by Louis B. Mayer, founder of Louis B. Mayer
Pictures Corporation which merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is the
only Awards ceremony not to be broadcast either on radio or TV. The
radio broadcast was aired the following year in 1930. The first television
broadcast was made by NBC on March 19, 1953.

Janet Gaynor won the first Best Actress Academy Award
in the 1929 ceremony.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (April 16, 1889 – December 25, 1977)

In one of history’s most famous cases of body-snatching, two men steal the
corpse of the revered film actor Sir Charles Chaplin from a cemetery in the
Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva,
near Lausanne, Switzerland, on this day in 1978.

After a five-week investigation, police arrested two auto mechanics–
Roman Wardas, of Poland, and Gantscho Ganev, of Bulgaria–who on
May 17 led them to Chaplin’s body, which they had buried in a cornfield
about one mile from the Chaplin family’s home in Corsier.

A comic actor who was perhaps most famous for his alter ego, the Little
Tramp, Chaplin was also a respected filmmaker whose career spanned
Hollywood’s silent film era and the momentous transition to “talkies” in
the late 1920s. Chaplin died on Christmas Day in 1977, at the age of 88.

                                                                                                      (HISTORY)

The Little Tramp

In a 1995 survey of film critics worldwide, Chaplin was
voted the greatest actor in film history.

CAMILLE BOHANNON

On this day in 1992, Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced they are separating.

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade,"
was published in England on this day in 1854.

Solidarity Union leader Lech Walesa won Poland’s first direct
presidential election in the country’s history on this day in 1990.

Lech Wałęsa turned 74 in September.

Kirk Douglas in Spartacus 1960.

Kirk Douglas (Issur Danielovitch) is 101 years old today.

Actor, producer, director, and author Kirk Douglas is one of the
last living people of the film industry’s Golden Age. During his
career he appeared in more than 90 movies. He has received
three Academy Award nominations, an Oscar for Lifetime
Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As an
author, he has written ten novels and memoirs. Currently, he
is No. 17 on the American Film Institute‘s list of the greatest
male screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema.

MIKE GRACIA

It was on this day in 1868.

Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982)

1940

1957

1981

ED DANAHUE

President Clinton Commits the United States to the Kosovo War on
this day in 1999.