It Happened ToDay: Buster Brown & Yellow Kid

It Happened ToDay:

Buster Brown & Yellow Kid

January14, 1863 - Richard Outcault,Creator of the "Sunday" Comic Strip was born.

Richard Outcault, the artist whose comics were the first to appear in color 1894 in the "New York World", was born on this day in 1863. A pioneering force in the world of illustration and comics, Outcault would bring the use of color, word balloons, and multiple panels to the forefront of the art of drawing comics.

Outcault previously worked as an illustrator for Thomas Edison. At the height of the New York paper-wars of the Glitter Era, Outcault would be recruited by Joseph Pulitzer to draw comics and illustrations for the"New York World" newspaper. He would later be lured away by William Randolph Hearst to do the same at the "New York Journal".

In 1895 his comic "Hogan's Alley" would debut as the first color comic on the front page of a newspaper. The color would be yellow, and featured the primary character of a bald-headed boy in a nightshirt who became known as "Yellow Kid". This character would give rise to the pejorative term"Yellow Journalism". The Yellow Kid comics would also be one of thefirst examples of cross-merchandizing in media. Retailers vied to have references to a variety of products emblazoned on the front of Yellow Kid's nightshirt.

After defecting to Hearst's "New York Journal" Outcault would continue to draw Yellow Kid and created the endearing character of "Buster Brown" and his dog Tige. The likeness of Buster and his dog would later be licensed as the logo for another iconoclastic American product - Buster Brown Shoes!

Quote for ToDay:

Opportunities multiply as they are seized. - Sun Tzufrom "The Art of War"

More selected events that happened ToDay:

• 1784 - The United States ratified The Treaty of Paris with England ending the Revolutionary War.
• 1875 - Albert Schweitzer, the theologian, musician, philosopher and Nobel Prize-winning physician was born on this day in 1875 in then Upper-Alsace, Germany, now known as Haut-Rhin (Upper-Rhine), France.
• 1878 - Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone for Britain's Queen Victoria.
• 1953 - Josip Broz Tito was elected president of Yugoslavia by the country's Parliament.
• 1973 - The Miami Dolphins defeated the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII and became the first NFL team to go undefeated through an entire season.
• 1985 - Martina Navratilova won her 100th tournament. She joined Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert Lloyd as the only professional tennis players to win 100 tournaments.
• 1993 - The British government pledged to introduce legislation to criminalize invasions of privacy by the press.
• 1994 - U.S. President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed Kremlin accords to stop aiming missiles at any nation and to dismantle the nuclear arsenal of Ukraine.
• 1998 - Whitewater prosecutors questioned Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House about the gathering of FBI background files on past Republican political appointees.
• 1999 - The impeachment trial of U.S. President Clinton began in Washington, DC.
• 2000 - A U.N. tribunal sentenced five Bosnian Croats to up to 25 years for the 1993 massacre of over 100 Muslims in a Bosnian village.
• 2000 - The Dow Jones industrial average hit a new high when it closed at 11,722.98. Earlier in the session, the Dow had risen to 11,750.98. Both records stood until October 3, 2006. The Dow Jones closed this past Friday at 12,606.30 and it briefly crossed the 14,000 mark (the highest it has ever reached) back in mid-October.
• 2002 - NBC's "Today Show" celebrated its 50th anniversary on television having premiered on this date in 1952.
• 2005 - A probe, from the Cassini-Huygens mission, sent back pictures during and after landing on Saturn's moon Titan. The mission was launched on October 15, 1997.

Thank you for reading It Happened ToDay. I hope you have a wonderful day!