Ransom Eli Olds (June 3, 1864 – August 26, 1950)

Olds of Lansing, Michigan was a pioneer of the American
automotive industry who founded Olds Motors Works—
which would later become Oldsmobile—on August 21, 1897.

 He claimed to have built his first steam car as early as 1887
and his first gasoline-powered car in 1896.

The modern assembly line and its basic concept is credited
to Olds, who used it to build the first mass-produced auto, 
the Oldsmobile Curved Dash, beginning in 1901. 

On August 20, 1920, seven men, including legendary all-around
athlete and football star Jim Thorpe, met to organize a professional football league at the Jordan and Hupmobile Auto Showroom in
Canton, Ohio. The meeting led to the creation of the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), the forerunner to the
hugely successful National Football League.

James Francis Thorpe
(May 22 or 28, 1887 – March 28, 1953)

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Singer Madonna Louise Ciccone is 64 years young today.

The singer, songwriter, and actress is referred to as the "Queen
of Pop". Rolling Stone listed her among its greatest artists and
greatest songwriters of all time.

Apocalypse Now, the acclaimed Vietnam War film directed by
Francis Ford Coppola, opened in theaters around the United
States on August 15, 1979.

The film, inspired in part by Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella
Heart of Darkness, among other sources, told the story of
an Army captain (played by Martin Sheen) and crew of men
who are sent into the Cambodian jungle to kill a U.S. Special
Forces colonel (Marlon Brando) who has gone AWOL and is
thought to be crazy. Apocalypse Now, which co-starred Robert
Duvall and Dennis Hopper, became notorious for its long,
difficult production, which included budget problems, shooting
delays due to bad weather on the Philippines set, a heart attack 
for Sheen and a nervous breakdown for Coppola.  
                                             

Francis Ford Coppola became 83 in April.

  Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984 

Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” (1956) is one of the biggest and
most instantly recognizable pop songs in history. It’s a song
so closely associated with the King of Rock and Roll, in fact,
that many may mistakenly assume that it was a Presley original.
In fact, the story of the song that gave Elvis his longest-running
#1 hit (11 weeks) in the summer of 1956 began four years earlier,
when “Hound Dog” was recorded for the very first time by the
rhythm-and-blues singer Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton in
Los Angeles, California. According to Maureen Mahon, a music
professor at New York University,"the song is seen as an
important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of
the guitar as the key instrument".

Thornton was found dead at age 57 by medical personnel in a
Los Angeles boarding house on July 25, 1984. She died of heart
and liver disorders due to her longstanding alcohol abuse.