Burl Ives was a actor, writer and folk music singer. As an actor, Ives work
included comedies, dramas, and voice work in theater, television, and film. He
is most known as the narrator, Sam the Snowman, in the stop-motion animated
TV special, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Ives continues to be linked to
the Christmas season with the yearly rebroadcast of the special.

Ives with Sam the Snowman

This 1949 version of Lavender Blue was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The Wise Little Hen is a Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies cartoon, based on
the fairy tale The Little Red Hen. The cartoon marked the debut of Donald
Duck. It was released on June 9, 1934.

Film actor William Lawrence Boyd is best known for portraying cowboy hero
Hopalong Cassidy (above).

In 1885, Edwin Binney and his cousin C. Harold Smith (above) took control of
the Peekskill Chemical Company and re-named it Binney & Smith. While doing 
experiment with a mixture of slate waste, cement, and talc, Binney created the 
first dustless white chalk. His invention was awarded a gold medal at the St.
Louis World’s Fair in 1904. It was one year later that Benny & Smith
produced the first box of Crayola crayons (shown below).

Advertisement for Crayola from March 1905

Walt Disney’s first ever 3-D cartoon “Melody” premiered at
the Paramount Theater in Hollywood. It was a short (10-min)
distributed by RKO. The film was the first in a proposed series
of shorts teaching the principles of music.