Little Nemo (1911) is a silent animated short film, the first by
American cartoonist Winsor McCay. One of the earliest animated films, it
features characters from his comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. The
film's expressive character animation distinguished it from the earlier
experiments of animators such as James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl.
McCay, inspired by flip books his son brought home, came to see the
potential of the animated film medium. The short's four thousand
drawings on rice paper were shot at Vitagraph Studios under Blackton's
supervision. Most of the film is a live-action sequence in which McCay
bets his colleagues that he can make drawings that move. He wins the bet
with four minutes of animation in which the characters perform,
interact, and metamorphose to McCay's whim. After the film debuted, he
began using it in his vaudeville act. The film's enthusiastic reception
motivated him to hand-color each of the animated frames of the
originally black-and-white film. Its success led him to create more
animated films, including How a Mosquito Operates in 1912, and his best-
known film, Gertie the Dinosaur, in 1914.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo_(1911_film)>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1587:
Anglo-Spanish War: In the Bay of Cádiz, Francis Drake led the
first of several naval raids on the Spanish Armada that destroyed so
many ships that Philip II of Spain had to delay his plans to invade
England for over a year.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singeing_the_King_of_Spain%27s_Beard>
1862:
American Civil War: Union forces under David Farragut captured
New Orleans, securing access into the Mississippi River.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_New_Orleans>
1944:
Second World War: British agent Nancy Wake parachuted into the
Auvergne, becoming a liaison between the Special Operations Executive
and the local maquis group
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake>
1991:
A powerful tropical cyclone struck Chittagong, Bangladesh,
killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as 10 million
homeless.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Bangladesh_cyclone>
1997:
The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention went into effect,
outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons in
those countries that ratified the arms control agreement.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
yen:
1. The unit of Japanese currency (symbol: ¥), equal to 100 sen.
2. A coin or note worth one yen. […]
3. A strong desire, urge, or yearning.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yen>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Of what’s to come the wise perceive things about to happen.
Sometimes during moments of intense study their hearing’s troubled:
the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them, and they listen
reverently, while in the street outside the people hear nothing
whatsoever.
--Constantine P. Cavafy
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Constantine_P._Cavafy>