(1864 – 1941)

President Benjamin Harrison welcomed Alice Sanger as
the first female White House staffer on January 2, 1890.

During an otherwise uneventful presidency remarkable
only for allowing Congress a free-for-all in spending public
funds, Alice Sanger’s appointment may have been an olive
branch to the growing women’s suffrage movement that
had gathered momentum during Harrison’s presidency. 

On December 28, 1895, the world’s first commercial movie
screening took place at the Grand Café in Paris. The film
was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French
brothers who developed a camera-projector called the
Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers unveiled their
invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief film
showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory (above).

On December 28, the entrepreneurial siblings screened
a series of short scenes from everyday French life and
charged admission for the first time.

The  Garand Café in Paris.

The Lumiere Brothers

The Lumiere Cinematographe.

Magnum, P.I. is a crime drama television series starring Tom
Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator (P.I.) living
on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from December 11, 1980 to
May 8, 1988 during its first-run broadcast on the American
television network CBS. Magnum, P.I. consistently ranked in
the top 20 U.S. television programs in the Nielsen ratings
during the first five years of its original run in the U.S.,
finishing as high as number three.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas," a beloved holiday television tradition for generations of American families, debuted to overwhelming popular acclaim despite CBS network fears
of failure on this day in history, Dec. 9, 1965.  (Fox News)         

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

In Scarface, Al Pacino played Tony Montana, who arrives in Florida
from Cuba in 1980 and eventually becomes wealthy from his
involvement in the booming cocaine business. Things fall apart
when Tony becomes addicted to the drug and his world collapses
in violence. Directed by Brian De Palma from a screenplay by Oliver Stone, Scarface co-starred Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Robert Loggia. The film was loosely
based on a 1932 gangster film of the same name, directed by
Howard Hawks and reportedly inspired in part by the real-life
mobster Al “Scarface” Capone. Though De Palma’s Scarface
received mixed reviews upon its initial release and was criticized
for its violence, it proved to be a success at the box-office and
went on to achieve pop-culture status.

DIRECTOR BRIAN DE PALMA