Inspire Your Heart with Art Day
Backward Day
Gorilla Suit Day Gorilla Suit Day takes place annually on 31 January. It was created on 31 Januay 1963 by Don Martin for a Mad Magazine comic strip
Hot Chocolate Day
Social Security Appreciation Day takes place annually on 31 January in the United States to Commemorate the date of 31 January 1940 when the first Social Security check was issued by the U.S. Government
The first episode of Doctor Who and The Silurians was broadcast 31January 1970. The Silurians are a fictional race of intelligent reptile-like humanoids who first appeared in Doctor Who in the 1970 serial Doctor Who and the Silurians as an intelligent, prehistoric and scientifically advanced sentient humanoids who predate the dawn of man; and went into hibernation to survive a large geological upheaval.
The story starts around An experimental Nuclear Power Station built in the caves below Wenley Moor which starts experiencing mysterious power drains. UNIT is called in to investigate, and the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Liz meet Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) who asks them to investigate after a worker is found dead. However Lawrence, the Director, resents UNIT’s presence and feels that it will interfere with the working of the plant, which is trying a new process to generate nuclear electric power. Dr Quinn, the Deputy Director, and Major Baker, the security chief, believe there is a saboteur in the centre,
In the caves the Doctor is attacked by a bipedal dinosaur-like creature which reaches the surface and hides in a barn before killing a farmer. So the Brigadier orders a manhunt. Meanwhile the Doctor’s investigations lead him to a chap named Quinn who may know the whereabouts of the Creature. Unfortunately Quinn is later found dead and the creature escapes. Meanwhile Baker explores the caves and is captured by more bipedal Reptilian humanoid creatures. The Doctor and Liz follow soon after and discover the reason for the recent unexplained energy drains at the nuclear plant when they find a colony of intelligent, scientifically advanced bipedal humanoid Reptillian creatures called Silurians living underground.
Meanwhile, Masters, the Permanent Under-Secretary in charge of the centre, arrives for a personal inspection, so the Doctor informs them about the Silurians and the Brigadier proposes exterminating them So the doctor goes to warn the Silurians of the danger. He then learns that the Silurians retreated underground to avoid the cataclysmic event which wiped out the Dinosaurs and were awoken by human activity. Unfortunately Baker and Masters are then infected by a deadly virus which the Silurians have devised in order to wipe-out mankind and Baker later dies in Hospital. Masters reaches London and the virus spreads causing more deaths. So the Doctor and Liz set about finding a cure but are interrupted by the Silurians who then decide to build a missile to destroy the Van Allen belt and make the Earth’s environment too inhospitable for humans coercing the Doctor into helping.
UNIT troops then battle with the Silurians in the caves while the Doctor Liz and the Brigadier are taken to the reactor control room in the Silurian base which is subsequently flooded with radiation making it uninhabitable. The Doctor then tries to reach a peaceful compromise with the Silurians, who retreat underground vowing to return and exterminate humanity forever, however the Brigadier decides that more extreme measures are called for…
John Lydon, A.K.A Johnny Rotten, vocalist with The Sex Pistols was born 31st January 1956. The Sex Pistols were formed in London in 1975 and were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians. Although their initial career lasted just two-and-a-half years and produced only four singles and one studio album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, they are regarded as one of the most influential acts in the history of popular music, and the album is regarded as a classic by many.
They evolved from “The Strand”, a London band formed in 1972 with working-class teenagers Steve Jones on vocals, Paul Cook on drums, and Wally Nightingale on guitar. According to a later account by Jones, both he and Cook played on instruments they had stolen. vocalist Johnny Rotten joined soon after In August 1975, when he was spotted wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words I Hate handwritten above the band’s name and holes scratched through the eyes. The line-up was completed by guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock, who was replaced by Sid Vicious in early 1977.
Under the management of impresario Malcolm McLaren, the band provoked controversies that captivated Britain. Their behaviour, as much as their music, brought them national attention and their concerts repeatedly faced difficulties with organizers and authorities, and public appearances often ended in mayhem. Their 1977 single “God Save the Queen”, attacking Britons’ social conformity and deference to the Crown, precipitated the “last and greatest outbreak of pop-based moral pandemonium”.
Since the spring of 1977, the three senior Sex Pistols had also been returning to the studio periodically with Chris Thomas to lay down the tracks for the band’s debut album. Initially to be called God Save Sex Pistols, it became known during the summer as Never Mind the Bollocks. In January 1978, after a turbulent tour of the United States, Rotten left the band and announced its break-up. Over the next several months, the three other band members recorded songs for McLaren’s film version of the Sex Pistols’ story, The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. Vicious died of a heroin overdose in February 1979. In 1996, Rotten, Jones, Cook and Matlock reunited for the Filthy Lucre Tour; since 2002, they have staged further reunion shows and tours. On 24 February 2006, the Sex Pistols—the four original members plus Vicious—were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Marcus Mumford, the lead singer with the incredibly lively folk rock band Mumford and Sons was born 31st January 1987. The earliest memories of the band performing together are within the close confines of a rehearsal room in Putney, and street-side jamming sessions on the pavement ahead of a show. It was a scene already common to the band as musicians falling in and out of bands of each and every genre. Band members Ben Lovett and Marcus Mumford were already working on songs together from their school days, but those songs didn’t realise their full potential until Winston Marshall (armed with a banjo and dobro), and Ted Dwane (double bass, but with a penchant for being a multi-instrumental marvel) gave these songs new arrangements, and injected them with a real ‘band’ dynamic. Within a few months, Mumford & Sons released their eponymously named debut EP,which featured the first, self-produced recordings of ‘Roll Away Your Stone’, ‘Awake My Soul’, and ‘White Blank Page.
Mumford and Sons Debut Album “Sigh no More” was released in October 2009 to much critical Acclaim and rave reviews and won the band a UK Brit Award in 2010 (Best Album), and was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize Award in the same year. Outside of Britain, Mumford & Sons also picked up two Grammy nominations (Best New Artist, Best Rock Song), and performed alongside Bob Dylan covering Maggie’s Farm at the awards themselves.
They also toured relentlessly in support of Sigh no More, The live shows in London sold-out instantly and were rammed to the rafters and this was soon replicated across the whole of the UK and The British and Ireland shows were selling out rapidly with each and every passing tour. A second EP was released, ‘Love Your Ground’, which featured the band’s own recordings of ‘Little Lion Man’ and the firm live favourite, ‘Feel The Tide’. This was followed by more touring, round Europe and They also had a ten-day live adventure across India, and also played to sold-out arenas in America and Australia. They also made an awesome appearance at Glastonbury 2011 and their second album “Babel” was released in 2012, the latest album Wilder Mind was released in 2018.
Best known for Winnie the Pooh, the English Author, poet and playwright Alan Alexander Milne sadly passed away 31 January 1956. He was born 18 January 1882 in Hampstead London. He grew up at Henley House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road (now Crescent), Kilburn, a small public school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells, who taught there in 1889–90. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he studied on a mathematics scholarship. While there, he edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine.He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne’s work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor. After graduating from Cambridge in 1903, A. A. Milne contributed humorous verse and whimsical essays to Punch, the staff in 1906 and becoming an assistant editor.During this period he published 18 plays and 3 novels, including the murder mystery The Red House Mystery (1922). His son was born in August 1920 and in 1924 Milne produced a collection of children’s poems When We Were Very Young, which were illustrated by Punch staff cartoonist E. H. Shepard. A collection of short stories for children Gallery of Children, and other stories that became part of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, were first published in 1925.
Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the Royal Corps of Signals. He was recruited into Military Intelligence to write propaganda articles between 1916 and 1918. He was discharged on 14 February 1919, & settled in Mallord Street, Chelsea. After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934), which he retracted somewhat with 1940’s War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of English writer P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the light-hearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near treason by cooperating with his country’s enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend (e.g., in The Mating Season) by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories, and claiming that Milne “was probably jealous of all other writers…. But I loved his stuff.Milne married Dorothy “Daphne” de Sélincourt in 1913, and their only son, Christopher Robin Milne, was born in 1920. In 1925, A. A. Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex.During World War II, A. A. Milne was Captain of the Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain “Mr. Milne” to the members of his platoon.
Milne was an early screenwriter for the British film industry, writing four stories filmed in 1920 for the company Minerva Films (founded in 1920 by the actor Leslie Howard and his friend and story editor Adrian Brunel). These were The Bump, starring Aubrey Smith; Twice Two; Five Pound Reward; and Bookworms. Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute. Milne had met Howard when the actor starred in Milne’s play Mr Pim Passes By in London. Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin after his son, Christopher Robin Milne, and various characters inspired by his son’s stuffed animals, most notably the bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin Milne’s stuffed bear, originally named “Edward”,was renamed “Winnie-the-Pooh” after a Canadian black bear named Winnie (after Winnipeg), which was used as a military mascot in World War I, and left to London Zoo during the war. “The pooh” comes from a swan called “Pooh”. E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son’s teddy, Growler (“a magnificent bear”), as the model.
The rest of Christopher Robin Milne’s toys, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger, were incorporated into A. A. Milne’s stories,two more characters – Rabbit and Owl – were created by Milne’s imagination. Christopher Robin Milne’s own toys are now under glass in New York. The fictional Hundred Acre Wood of the Pooh stories derives from Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, South East England, where the Pooh stories were set. Milne lived on the northern edge of the Forest and took his son walking there. E. H. Shepard drew on the landscapes of Ashdown Forest as inspiration for many of the illustrations he provided for the Pooh books. The adult Christopher Robin commented: “Pooh’s Forest and Ashdown Forest are identical”. wooden Pooh Bridge in Ashdown Forest, where Pooh and Piglet inventedPoohsticks, is a tourist attraction.Not yet known as Pooh, he made his first appearance in a poem, “Teddy Bear”, published in the British magazine Punch in February 1924. Pooh first appeared in the London Evening News on Christmas Eve, 1925, in a story called “The Wrong Sort Of Bees”.Winnie-the-Pooh was published in 1926, followed by The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. A second collection of nursery rhymes, Now We Are Six, was published in 1927. All three books were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. Milne also published four plays in this period. He also “gallantly stepped forward” to contribute a quarter of the costs of dramatising P. G. Wodehouse’s A Damsel in Distress.His book The World of Pooh won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958.
Milne, also freed pre-war Punch from its ponderous facetiousness; he had made a considerable reputation as a playwright (like his idol J. M. Barrie) on both sides of the Atlantic; he had produced a witty piece of detective writing in The Red House Mystery (although this was severely criticised byRaymond Chandler for the implausibility of its plot). But once Milne had, in his own words, “said goodbye to all that in 70,000 words” (the approximate length of his four principal children’s books), he had no intention of producing any reworkings lacking in originality, given that one of the sources of inspiration, his son, was growing older.His reception remained warmer in America than Britain, and he continued to publish novels and short stories, but by the late 1930s, the audience for Milne’s grown-up writing had largely vanished: Even his old literary home, Punch, where the When We Were Very Young verses had first appeared, rejected him, as Christopher Milne details in his autobiography The Enchanted Places. Milne also wrote ‘The Norman Church’ and an assembly of articles entitled Year In, Year Out He also adapted Kenneth Grahame’s novel The Wind in the Willows for the stage as Toad of Toad Hall. A special introduction written by Milne is included in some editions of Grahame’s novel.
Following the death of A. A. Milne The rights to A. A. Milne’s Pooh books were left to four beneficiaries: his family, the Royal Literary Fund, Westminster School and the Garrick Club, his widow sold her rights to the Pooh characters to Stephen Slesinger, whose widow sold the rights after Slesinger’s death to the Walt Disney Company, which has since made many Pooh cartoon movies, a Disney Channel television show, as well as Pooh-related merchandise. In 2001, the other beneficiaries sold their interest in the estate to the Disney Corporation. Forbes magazine ranks Winnie the Pooh the most valuable fictional character; in 2002 Winnie the Pooh merchandising products alone had annual sales of more than $5.9 billion. A memorial plaque in Ashdown Forest, unveiled by Christopher Robin in 1979, commemorates the work of A. A. Milne and Shepard in creating the world of Pooh.Milne once wrote of Ashdown Forest: “In that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing”. In 2003, Winnie the Pooh was listed at number 7 on the BBC’s survey The Big Read. Several of Milne’s children’s poems were set to music by the composer Harold Fraser-Simson and his poems have been parodied many times, including with the books When We Were Rather Older and Now We Are Sixty.
Veteran Radio broadcaster and television presenter Sir Michael Terence “Terry” Wogan, KBE DL sadly died on the 31 January 2016 at his home in Buckinghamshire aged 77. Wogan was Born in Limerick. Ireland on 3 August 1938. at the age of 15, after his father was promoted to general manager, Wogan moved to Dublin with his family. While living in Dublin, he attended Crescent College’s sister school, Belvedere College. He participated in amateur dramatics and discovered a love of rock and roll. After leaving Belvedere in 1956, Wogan had a brief career in the banking profession, joining the Royal Bank of Ireland. While in his twenties, he joined the national broadcaster of Ireland, RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) as a newsreader and announcer, after seeing a newspaper advertisement inviting applicants.
Wogan conducted interviews and presented documentary features during his first two years at Raidió Teilifís Éireann, before moving to the light entertainment department as a disc jockey and host of TV quiz and variety shows such as Jackpot, a top rated quiz show on RTÉ in the 1960s. It was here that he developed his signature catchphrase, based on his name: “Wo’gwan.”[10] When the show was dropped by RTÉ TV in 1967, Wogan approached the BBC for extra work. He began working for BBC Radio, initially ‘down the line’ from London, first broadcasting on the Light Programme on Tuesday 27 September 1966. He presented the Tuesday edition of Late Night Extra for two years on BBC Radio 1, commuting weekly from Dublin to London. After covering Jimmy Young’s mid-morning show throughout July 1969, he was offered a regular afternoon slot between 3 and 5.
In April 1972, he took over the breakfast show on BBC Radio 2, swapping places with John Dunn, who briefly hosted the afternoon show. Wogan enjoyed unprecedented popularity, achieving audiences of up to 7.9 million. His seemingly ubiquitous presence across the media meant that he frequently became the butt of jokes by comedians of the time, among them The Goodies and The Barron Knights. He was capable of self-parody too, releasing a vocal version of the song “The Floral Dance” in 1978, by popular request from listeners who enjoyed hearing him sing over the instrumental hit by the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band. His version reached number 21 in the UK Singles Chart. A follow-up single, entitled “Me and the Elephant”, and an eponymous album were also released, but did not chart. In December 1984, Wogan left his breakfast show to pursue a full-time career in television and was replaced by Ken Bruce. His first chat show Wogan’s World, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from 6 June 1974 to 21 September 1975.
In January 1993, he returned to BBC Radio 2 to present the breakfast show, then called Wake Up to Wogan. Which included rambling, esoteric banter and was highly interactive with much of the entertainment coming from letters and emails sent in by listeners (many of whom adopt punning pseudonyms, such as Edina Cloud, Lucy Lastic, Sly Stunnion, Roland Butter, Lucy Quipment, Anne Kersaway, Peregrine Trousers, Alf Hartigan, Mick Sturbs, Hellen Bach and “Tess Tickles”. Wogan is also widely credited with launching the career of singer Katie Melua after he repeatedly played her debut single, “The Closest Thing to Crazy”, in late 2003 Which she performed on Children in Need in 2005.
He worked for the BBC in Great Britain for most of his career. Before he retired from his BBC Radio 2 weekday breakfast programme Wake Up to Wogan in 2009, it had eight million regular listeners, making him the most listened-to radio broadcaster in Europe. Wogan began his career on the Irish national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann where he presented shows such as Jackpot in the 1960s and became a leading media personality in the UK from the late 1960s often being referred to as a “national treasure”.In addition to his weekday radio show, he was known in the United Kingdom for his work for television, including the BBC One chat show Wogan, presenting Children in Need, the game show Blankety Blank and Come Dancing and as the BBC’s commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest from 1971 to 2008.
Wogan’s radio show included running jokes involving Wogan’s newsreader colleagues Alan Dedicoat (nicknamed ‘Deadly’ after the spoonerism ‘Deadly Alancoat’), Fran Godfrey and John Marsh (nicknamed ‘Boggy’). He also narrated a series of spoof “Janet and John” stories during the breakfast show. Which were a pastiche of children’s learn-to-read stories but are littered with humorous sexual double-entendres.Wogan’s radio show also included exchanges with “the Totty from Splotty “ – Lynn Bowles, the Welsh traffic reporter from Splott, Cardiff – which often involved reading limericks from listeners cut short after 1 or 2 lines due to risqué innuendo. On 2009, Wogan left the breakfast show with Chris Evans taking over. However Wogan returned to Radio 2 from 14 February 2010 to host Weekend Wogan, a live weekly two-hour Sunday show on Radio 2, hosted in front of a live studio audience andfeaturing live musical performance and guests, between 11.00 am and 1.00 pm and continued to host the show until November 2015 when, due to ill health, he was replaced by Richard Madeley
Part Two
From 1980 Wogan presented The BBC Televised Charity appeal Children in Need alongside Esther Rantzen and Sue Lawley. Raising money for various children’s charities and good causes and also appeared on the comedy quiz show QI in 2008 In 2008, Wogan and singer Aled Jones released a single “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” which got to number three in the UK music charts. The money raised went to BBC Children in Need. The two recorded a second Christmas single “Silver Bells” in 2009 which was also in aid of BBC Children in Need. Wogan was the main regular presenter of Children in Need for more than thirty years, his last such appearance being in 2014. In November 2015, Wogan was unable to participate in the televised Children in Need appeal for the first time in its 35-year history due to poor health and was replaced by Dermot O’Leary.
In 1971, and from 1974, until 1977, Wogan provided the BBC’s radio commentary for the Eurovision Song Contest and From 1980 until 2008, he provided the BBC’s television commentary and became known for his sardonic acerbic wit and highly cynical comments. In 1998 He co-hosted the contest with Ulrika Jonsson in Birmingham when Dana International of Israel won the contest. He also hosted Eurovision in 1973, 1975 and 1977 until 1996, 1998, and from 2003 until 2008. As well as the companion show Making Your Mind Up, in which the British public voted to decide their Eurovision entry. In recent years, the Contest has become notorious for what is widely seen as an increase in political voting, the UK’s entry has in recent years often come last despite being of better quality in favor of some really ridiculous songs.In 2008, Wogan gave up presenting Eurovision after 35 years when United Kingdom once again finished last, stating it had become predictable and was no longer a music contest (I’m not sure it ever was, it’s more of a freak show sometimes) and was replaced by Graham Norton.
Wogan’s was also famous for TV chat shows including What’s on Wogan? And Saturday Live in 1981. Wogan was then given his own chat show, Wogan, which after a trial run on a midweek evening, was recommissioned for broadcast on Saturday nights from 1982 to 1984. Between 1985 and 1992, the show became thrice-weekly on early weekday evenings. Memorable incidents in the series included the interviews with a drunk George Best and Oliver Reed, a silent Chevy Chase, a nervous Anne Bancroft who was so petrified she gave monosyllabic answers and counted to ten before descending the entrance steps to the studio, Ronnie Barker announcing his retirement on the show, and David Icke claiming to be the “Son of God”. Despite it”s success, in 1992 his talk show was replaced by the ill-fated soap Eldorado and he briefly hosted a new weekly chat strand Terry Wogan’s Friday Night in 1993. In 2006 Wogan presented Wogan Now and Then where he interviewed guests from his old chat show as well as new guests. In 2015 BBC Two launched a new compilation series, Wogan: the Best Of, featuring selected interview segments and music performances from Wogan’s past chat series, linked by new introductions from Wogan.
In 1981 Wogan set the world record for the longest successful golf putt ever televised at 33 yards at the Gleneagles golf course in a pro-celebrity TV programme on the BBC and also narrated the BBC television series Stoppit and Tidyup which was broadcast in 1987.Wogan appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross four times, between 2004 and 2009 and during Top Gear, Wogan managed to become the second-slowest guest to go around the test track as the “Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car”, a Suzuki Liana.In 2010, Wogan made a cameo appearance in the second series of Being Human, and also guest-hosted Never Mind the Buzzcocks and hosted Wogan on Wodehouse for BBC Two. In 2013, Wogan appeared as a panellist on ITV game show Through the Keyhole and participated in a celebrity edition of the BBC One game show Pointless, with celebrities including Bobby Ball and Esther Rantzen, in aid of Children in Need. In 2014, Wogan appeared as a guest reporter on Bang Goes the Theory, on which he discussed old-age dementia. He also appeared on the Channel 4 game show Draw It! And guest hosted an episode of The One Show with Alex Jones.
During his long and distinguished career Wogan has received many honours. He was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1997 and elevated to an Honorary Knight Commander of the same order (KBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2005. His knighthood was made substantive on 11 October 2005, allowing him to use the style “Sir and in 2007, he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. In 2007, Wogan’s home City of Limerick honoured him with the Freedom of the City. In 2004, he received an Honorary D.Litt. degree from the University of Limerick as well as a special lifetime achievement award from his native city and also received an Honorary LL.D. degree from Leicester University in 2010. Wogan was also the subject of This Is Your Life in 1978.Wogan was inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame at a gala dinner held in his honour in 2009 and was announced as the Ultimate Icon of Radio 2, commemorating the station’s 40th birthday, alongside fellow nominees, The Beatles, Diana, Princess of Wales and Nelson Mandela and chose Stardust” by Nat King Cole as his iconic song of the last 40 years and Favourite song on Desert Island Discs.
Best known for his television shows including I dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart as well as his many novels, the Academy Award-winning American writer Sidney Sheldon Sadly passed away on January 30, 2007. He Was Born February 11, 1917. In 1937, Sheldon moved to Hollywood, California, where he reviewed scripts and collaborated on a number of B movies. Sheldon enlisted in the military during World War II as a pilot in the War Training Service, a branch of the Army Air Corps,His unit was disbanded before he saw any action. After World War II He Returned to civilian life and moved to New York City where he began writing musicals for the Broadway stage while continuing to write screenplays for both MGM Studios and Paramount Pictures. He became a prolific writer, and at one time he had three musicals on Broadway at the same time: a rewritten The Merry Widow, Jackpot, and Dream with Music.
His success on Broadway brought him back to Hollywood where his first assignment was The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay of 1947. He was one of the writers on the screenplay for the 1948 musical film Easter Parade and sole writer for the 1950 musical film Annie Get Your Gun, both of which featured the songs of Irving Berlin. When television became the new popular medium, he decided to try his hand in it. “I suppose I needed money,” he remembered. “I met Patty Duke one day at lunch. So I produced The Patty Duke Show, and I did something nobody else in TV ever did. For seven years, I wrote almost every single episode of the series.”
Sheldon also created, produced and wrote I Dream of Jeannie in his co-production capacity with Screen Gems, writing all but two dozen scripts in five years, sometimes using three pseudonyms (Mark Rowane, Allan Devon, Christopher Golato) while simultaneously writing scripts for The Patty Duke Show. He also used the same pseudonyms in writing all seventeen episodes of Nancy. He later admitted that he did this because he felt his name was appearing too often in the credits as creator, producer, copyright owner andwriter of these series. He also created and wrote for the series Hart to Hart. Production for I Dream of Jeannie ended in 1970 after five seasons.
In 1969, Sheldon wrote his first novel, The Naked Face, which earned him a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe Award from theMystery Writers of America in the category of Best First Novel. Later During a 1982 interview he stated that “During the last year of I Dream of Jeannie, I decided to try a novel,” His next novel, The Other Side of Midnight, climbed to #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list as did several ensuing novels, a number of which were also made into motion pictures or TV miniseries Including Windmills of the Gods. His novels often featured determined women who persevere in a tough world run by hostile men they also feature a lot of suspense and cliff hanger devices to keep the reader turning the page. Sheldon remains the seventh best selling fiction writer of all time And has also been Called “mr Blockbuster” and “the Prince of Potboilers”.
Best known for creating many Porsche automobiles as well as the first hybrid vehicle (gasoline-electric), the Volkswagen Beetle, and the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK. Austrian automotive engineer Dr Ing Hc Ferdinand Porsche sadly passed away 30 January 1951. Born 3rd September 1875 in in Maffersdorf in the Czech Republic. He showed high aptitude for mechanical work at a very young age. He managed to attend classes at the Imperial Technical School in Reichenberg (Czech: Liberec) at night while helping his father in his mechanical shop by day. Thanks to a referral, Porsche landed a job with the Béla Egger Electrical company in Vienna when he turned 18 In Vienna he would sneak into the local university whenever he could after work. Beyond auditing classes there, Porsche had never received any higher engineering education. During his five years with Béla Egger, Porsche first developed the electric hub motor.In 1898, Porsche joined the Vienna-based factory Jakob Lohner & Co, that produced coaches for Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, as well as for the kings of England, Sweden, and Romania.
Lohner had begun construction of automobiles in 1896 under Ludwig Lohner. Their first design, unveiled in 1898, was the “System Lohner-Porsche”, a carriage-like car driven by two electric motors, directly fitted within the front wheel hubs, and powered by batteries. This drive train construction was easily expanded to four-wheel drive, by simply mounting two more electric motors to the rear wheels as well, and indeed such a specimen was ordered by the Englishman E. W. Hart in 1900. In December that year, the car was presented at the Paris World Exhibition under the name Toujours-Contente. Even though this one-off vehicle had been commissioned for the purposes of racing and record-breaking. Whilst employed by Lohner, Porsche introduced the”Mixte”vehicle/ transmission concept in 1901: which coupled a generator instead of a massive battery-pack, to an internal combustion engine built by Daimler, to drive the electric hub motors and (for vehicle reliability) a small battery pack.
This way Porsche had created the first petroleum electric hybrid vehicle on record, although since sufficiently reliable gears and couplings weren’t available at the time, he chose to make it a series-hybrid, an arrangement currently more common in diesel-electric or turbo-electric railway locomotives than automobiles. he up to 56 km/h (35 mph) fast carriages broke several Austrian speed records, and also won the Exelberg Rally in 1901 with Porsche himself piloting a front-wheel drive hybrid specimen. It was later upgraded with more powerful engines from Daimler and Panhard, which proved to be enough to post more speed records. In 1905, Porsche was recognized with the Poetting prize as Austria’s most outstanding automotive engineer.
In 1906, Austro-Daimler recruited Porsche as their chief designer. Porsche’s best known Austro-Daimler car was designed for the Prince Henry Trial in 1910, named after Wilhelm II’s younger brother Prince Heinrich of Prussia. Examples of this streamlined, 85 horsepower (63 kW) car won the first three places, and the car is still better known by the nickname “Prince Henry” than by its model name “Modell 27/80″.By 1916 Porsche had advanced to Managing Director and received the honorary doctorate degree, “Dr. techn h.c.” from the Vienna University of Technology in 1917 (hence the “Dr. Ing h.c” in his name, meaning “Doktor Ingenieur Honoris Causa”). Porsche successfully continued to construct racing cars, winning 43 out of 53 races with his 1922 design. In 1923, Porsche left Austro-Daimler but landed a new job as Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft’s Technical Director in Stuttgart, Germany a few months later.
He received another honorary doctorate from the Stuttgart Technical University for his work at Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft in Stuttgart and later the honorary title Professor. While at Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, he came up with several very successful race car designs. The heavy series of models equipped with superchargers that later culminated in the Mercedes-Benz SSK dominated its class of motor racing in the 1920s. He also designed the Benz Tropfenwagen, which was the first race car with mid-engine, rear-wheel drive layout. In 1926, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie merged into Daimler-Benz, with their joint products called, Mercedes-Benz. In April 1931 Porsche founded his consulting firm, Dr. req. h.c. F. Porsche GmbH, Konstruktionen und Beratungen für Motoren und Fahrzeugbau, in Stuttgart, Then founded a subsidiary company Hochleistungs Motor GmbH (High Efficiency Engines Ltd.) in 1932 to develop a racing car, for which he had no customer. Based on Max Wagner’s mid-engined layout 1923 Benz Tropfenwagen, or “Teardrop” aerodynamic design; the experimental P-Wagen project racing car (P stood for Porsche), was designed according to the regulations of the 750 kg formula. The main regulation of this formula meant that the weight of the car without driver, fuel, oil, water and tire was not allowed to exceed 750 kg.
In June 1934, Porsche received a contract to design a “people’s car” (or Volkswagen), following on from his previous designs such as the 1931 Type 12 car designed for Zündapp.(the villain in Pixar’s film Cars 2 is based on a Zundapp Janus And the Zundapp type 12 looks like a VW Beetle) The first two prototype cars were completed in 1935. These were followed by several further pre-production batches during 1936 to 1939. During the war, production concentrated almost exclusively on the military Kübelwagen and Schwimmwagen variants. Mass production of the car, which later became known as the Beetle, commenced after the end of the war. The headquarters of Volkswagen Group was set up in Wolfsburg. Having garnered state funds It was agreed that it would be better for Mercedes Benz and Auto Union to develop their projects separately resulting in funds being split between Mercedes and Auto Union. This highly annoyed Mercedes, who had already developed their Mercedes-Benz W125, and resulted in a fierce rivallry between the two companIes.
In November 1945 after the war, Porsche was asked to continue the design of the Volkswagen, The company also started work on a new design, the Porsche 356, the first car to carry the Porsche brand. The Porsche family returned to Stuttgart in 1949 but had trouble restarting their business after the war. When Ferry Porsche eventually did resurrect the company he counted on series production figures of about 1,500. However it proved hugely popular and More than 78,000 Porsche 356s were manufactured in the following 17 years.Porsche was also contracted by Volkswagen for additional consulting work and received a royalty on every Volkswagen Beetle manufactured. This provided Porsche with a comfortable financial situation as more than 20 million Beetles were built.
In November 1950, Porsche visited the Wolfsburg Volkswagen factory for the first time since the end of World War II and discussed the future of the VW Beetle which was already being produced in large numbers. Sadly Porsche suffered a stroke A few weeks later from which He did not fully recover, and died on 30 January 1951. During his life Porsce recieve many awards for his work, In 1937, Porsche was awarded the German National Prize for Art and Science, In 1996, Porsche was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame and in 1999 he posthumously won the award of Car Engineer of the Century.In 2010 an official memorial was also erected in Porsche’s birthplace in Vratislavice nad Nisou, Czech Republic, featuring a Porsche 356.
Best known as a drummer and vocalist for British progressive rock groups Genesis and Brand X, as well as being a popular solo artist, the English singer-songwriter, drummer, pianist producer and actor Phil Collins LVO celebrates his birthday on 30th January. Collins’s professional music career began as a drummer, first with Flaming Youth and then more famously with Genesis, after he answered a Melody Maker classified ad for “…a drummer sensitive to acoustic music, and acoustic twelve-string guitarist”.
The first album Nursery Cryme was released a year later. Although his role remained primarily that of drummer and backing vocalist for the next five years, he twice sang lead vocals: once on “For Absent Friends” (from Nursery Cryme) and once on “More Fool Me” (from Selling England by the Pound). In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: “For Absent Friends” from 1971′s Nursery Cryme album and “More Fool Me” from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973.
Following Gabriel’s departure in 1975, Collins became the group’s lead singer, and sang lead vocals on several chart hits in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1975 and 2010, either as a solo artist or with Genesis. He has released many great albums, either as part of Genesis or as a Solo Artist including INVISIBLE TOUCH, FOXTROT & GENESIS, His singles, sometimes dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy “In the Air Tonight”, dance pop of “Sussudio”, piano-driven “Against All Odds”, to the political statements of “Another Day in Paradise”.
Collins has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including seven Grammy Awards, five Brit Awards—winning Best British Male three times, an Academy Award, and two Golden Globes for his solo work. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010, and is one of only three recording artists (along with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson) who have sold over 100 million albums worldwide both as solo artists and (separately) as principal members of a band. In 2008, Collins was ranked the 22nd most successful artist on the “The Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists.
American Aviation Pioneer and youngest of The Wright brothers, Orville Wright sadly died on January 30, 1948. He was Born 19th August 1871, he along with his elder brother Wilbur, is credited with inventing and building the world’s first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. The Wright Brothers spent a great deal of time observing birds in flight. They noticed that birds soared into the wind and that the air flowing over the curved surface of their wings created lift. Birds change the shape of their wings to turn and manoeuvre. They believed that they could use this technique to obtain roll control by warping, or changing the shape, of a portion of the wing.
The Wright Brothers designed their first aircraft: a small, biplane glider flown as a kite to test their solution for controlling the craft by wing warping. Wing warping is a method of arching the wingtips slightly to control the aircraft’s rolling motion and balance.Over the next three years, Wilbur and his brother Orville would design a series of gliders which would be flown in both unmanned (as kites) and piloted flights. They read about the works of Cayley, and Langley, and the hang-gliding flights of Otto Lilienthal. They corresponded with Octave Chanute concerning some of their ideas. They recognized that control of the flying aircraft would be the most crucial and hardest problem to solve. Following a successful glider test, the Wrights built and tested a full-size glider. They selected Kitty Hawk, North Carolina as their test site because of its wind, sand, hilly terrain and remote location
.In 1900, the Wrights successfully tested their new 50-pound biplane glider with its 17-foot wingspan and wing-warping mechanism at Kitty Hawk, in both unmanned and piloted flights. In fact, it was the first piloted glider. Based upon the results, the Wright Brothers planned to refine the controls and landing gear, and build a bigger glider.In 1901, at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, the Wright Brothers flew the largest glider ever flown, with a 22-foot wingspan, a weight of nearly 100 pounds and skids for landing. However, many problems occurred: the wings did not have enough lifting power; forward elevator was not effective in controlling the pitch; and the wing-warping mechanism occasionally caused the airplane to spin out of control. In their disappointment, they predicted that man will probably not fly in their lifetime.In spite of the problems with their last attempts at flight, the Wrights reviewed their test results and determined that the calculations they had used were not reliable. They decided to build a wind tunnel to test a variety of wing shapes and their effect on lift. Based upon these tests, the inventors had a greater understanding of how an airfoil (wing) works and could calculate with greater accuracy how well a particular wing design would fly. They planned to design a new glider with a 32-foot wingspan and a tail to help stabilize it.
During 1902, the brothers flew numerous test glides using their new glider. Their studies showed that a movable tail would help balance the craft and the Wright Brothers connected a movable tail to the wing-warping wires to coordinate turns. With successful glides to verify their wind tunnel tests, the inventors planned to build a powered aircraft. After months of studying how propellers work the Wright Brothers designed a motor and a new aircraft sturdy enough to accommodate the motor’s weight and vibrations. The craft weighed 700 pounds and came to be known as the Flyer.The brothers built a movable track to help launch the Flyer. This downhill track would help the aircraft gain enough airspeed to fly. After two attempts to fly this machine, one of which resulted in a minor crash, Orville Wright took the Flyer for a 12-second, sustained flight on December 17, 1903. This was the first successful, powered, piloted flight in history.
Orville succeeded to the presidency of the Wright Company upon Wilbur’s death. Sharing Wilbur’s distaste for business but not his brother’s executive skills, Orville sold the company in 1915. After 42 years living at their residence on 7 Hawthorn Street, Orville, Katharine and their father, Milton, moved to Hawthorn Hill in the spring of 1914. Milton died in his sleep on April 3, 1917, at the age of 88. Up until his death, Milton had been very active, preoccupied with reading, writing articles for religious publications and enjoying his morning walks. He had also marched in a Dayton Woman’s Suffrage Parade, along with Orville and Katharine. Orville made his last flight as a pilot in 1918 in a 1911 Model B. He retired from business and became an elder statesman of aviation, serving on various official boards and committees, including the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), predecessor agency to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce (ACCA), predecessor to the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).
Katharine married Henry Haskell of Kansas City, a former Oberlin classmate, in 1926. Orville was furious and inconsolable, feeling he had been betrayed by Katharine. He refused to attend the wedding or even communicate with her. He finally agreed to see her, apparently at Lorin’s insistence, just before she died of pneumonia on March 3, 1929. Orville Wright served NACA for 28 years. In 1930, he received the first Daniel Guggenheim Medal established in 1928 by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. In 1936, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. On April 19, 1944, the second production Lockheed Constellation, piloted by Howard Hughes and TWA president Jack Frye, flew from Burbank, California, to Washington, D.C. in 6 hours and 57 minutes (2300 mi – 330.9 mph). On the return trip, the airliner stopped at Wright Field to give Orville Wright his last airplane flight, more than 40 years after his historic first flight. He may even have briefly handled the controls. He commented that the wingspan of the Constellation was longer than the distance of his first flight.
Orville’s last major project was supervising the reclamation and preservation of the 1905 Wright Flyer III, which historians describe as the first practical airplane. Orville later expressed sadness in an interview years later about the death and destruction brought about by the bombers of World War II: Orville Wright died, over 35 years after his brother, following his second heart attack, having lived from the horse-and-buggy age to the dawn of supersonic flight. Both brothers are buried in the family plot at Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio. John T. Daniels, the Coast Guardsman who took their famous first flight photo, died the day after Orville.
Whizzbang1698 