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”.

Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, or simply Prince Valiant, is a long-
running comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure
that has told a continuous story during its entire history, and the full stretch
of that story now totals more than 4000 Sunday strips. Currently, the strip
appears weekly in more than 300 newspapers in the U.S., according to its 
distributor, King Features Syndicate.

The full-page strip continued until 1971 when strip #1788 was not offered in
full-page format—it was the last strip Foster drew. The strip continues today
by other artists in a half page format.

Harold (“Hal”) Rudolf Foster
(August 16, 1892 – July 25, 1982)

The syndicated daily and Sunday comic strip Peanuts was written and illustrated
by Charles M. Schulz and ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000,
continuing in reruns afterward. The strip is the most popular and influential in
the history of comic strips, with 17,897 strips published in all, making it "arguably
the longest story ever told by one human being". At its peak, Peanuts ran in over
2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was
translated into 21 languages. It helped to make the four-panel gag strip as the
standard in the United States, and together with its merchandise earned Schulz
more than $1 billion. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in almost
every U.S. newspaper.

Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000)

ROSS SIMPSON

Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is 62 today.

After taking a semester off from college, Denzel Washington 
worked as an overnight summer camp counselor, where he
discovered his acting abilities.

2006

"Charlie Brown" was a top-ten hit for The Coasters in the spring
of 1959. It went to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts,
and was the first of three top-ten hits for the group that year.