2005:
Today's Disney DVD releases include: Disneyland - The Secrets,
Stories and Magic of the Happiest Place on Earth, The Best of the Original Mickey Mouse Club, Mickey Mouse Club: The Best of Britney,
Justin and Christina, and Vintage Mickey.
Also released is the audio CD Walt Disney Takes You to Disneyland, the album that marked the beginning of Disneyland Records in 1956.
Issac Ryan Brown, best known for his portrayal of Booker in the Disney Channel sitcom Raven's Home, is born in Detroit, Michigan. He also appeared in 28 episodes of the ABC sitcom Black-ish (2014-19) and lent his voice to the animated Miles from Tomorrowland.
1925:
Disney's Alice Comedy Alice Wins the Derby, featuring Margie Gay as Alice,
premieres at the Piccadilly Theater in New York City.
1942:
First-year Mouseketeer Dennis Day is born in Las Vegas, Nevada.
1961:
The first draft of a screenplay is completed for a new Disney film titled Mary Poppins.
Disney's live-action adventure film Nikki, Wild Dog of the North is released. Based on the
book "Nomads of the North" by James Oliver Curwood, the films tells the story of a French-Canadian hunter, his
orphaned bear cub and his dog Nikki. A collaboration between Disney Studios and Canada's Cangary
productions, the film was shot with an all-Canadian cast and crew near Banff, Alberta.
1972:
Disney's live-action comedy Now You See Him, Now You Don't starring Kurt Russell, Cesar Romero, Joe Flynn, and Jim Backus, is released. A chemistry student named Dexter Riley (played by Russell) invents a spray that makes its wearer invisible.
Now You See him, Now You Don't is a sequel to the 1969 film The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.
1998:
Disney opens its first ESPN Zone (a sports themed restaurant, bar,
and sports arena) in Baltimore, Maryland.
Jodi Benson (the voice of Disney's Little Mermaid) finishes her 2-day
engagement at Disney World with performances at Epcot's America Gardens Theater.
2002:
The Lizzie McGuire episode "Over the Hill" debuts on Disney Channel.
Touchstone Pictures & Spyglass Entertainment release the post-apocalyptic science fantasy Reign of Fire. A brood of fire-breathing dragons emerges from the earth and begins setting everything ablaze, establishing dominance over the planet. The film stars Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, and Matthew McConaughey.
Monk, a comedy-drama detective mystery television series created by Andy Breckman and starring Tony Shalhoub as the title character Adrian Monk, debuts on USA Network.
The series is produced by Mandeville Films and Disney/ABC's Touchstone Television in association with Universal Network Television. Monk was a detective for the San Francisco Police Department until his wife, Trudy, was killed by a car bomb in a parking garage. He believes that Trudy's death was part of a larger conspiracy that she had uncovered during her time as a journalist. Trudy's death led Monk to suffer a nervous breakdown. Discharged from the police force, he becomes a recluse, refusing to leave his house until he gets help from nurse/assistant Sharona Fleming. Her aid allows him to work as a private detective and a consultant for the homicide unit. The cast includes Bitty Schram as Sharona, Ted Levine as Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, and Jason Gray-Stanford as Lieutenant Randy Disher.
1895:
futurist, and inventor - is born in Milton, Massachusetts. It is widely believed he developed and
named the geodesic dome first - from field experiments with Kenneth Snelson and others at Black Mountain College
(in North Carolina) in the late 1940s. (The invention of the geodesic dome was a solution to the pressing housing
problem at the time.) More than 500,000 geodesic domes have been built around the world since then, including
the 265-foot wide Spaceship Earth at Epcot! Fuller actually coined the phrase "Spaceship Earth" - to express
concern over the use of limited resources available on our planet.
2006:
Hong Kong Disneyland unveils 3 new Tomorrowland attractions - Stitch Encounter, Autopia and UFO Zone. They will officially open to visitors the next day.
1989:
Star Tours (sponsored by Panasonic) opens at Tokyo Disneyland.
It is the second Star Tours attraction in existence (the first opened at Disneyland in 1987).
2000:
The Tonight Show features a skit in which host Jay Leno steals a Disneyland Autopia car, and drives it onto the show with Donald Duck chasing him!
1948:
Four time Academy Award-winning sound designer and sound editor Ben Burtt is
born in Jamesville, New York. Best known for his work on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade, Burtt is responisble for the voices of WALL-E, M-O, and other robots in the 2008
Disney/Pixar computer-animated feature WALL-E. (Most of the characters do not have human voices, but
communicate with sounds which resemble voices.)
2008:
The Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra present "Salute to
Disney" a free open air summer concert held in Worcester.
JULY
JULY 12
JULY 12
THIS DAY MADE
IN THE
USA
Disneyland
uses over
200,000 light bulbs
per year!
 | ||||
| ||||
There are 11,000 lights used just to outline
the buildings on
Main Street, U.S.A.!
Tokyo Disneyland's Star Tours opens
"The most important thing to teach your children is that the sun does not rise and set. It is the Earth that revolves
around the sun. Then teach them the concepts of North, South, East and West, and that they relate to where they
happen to be on the planet's surface at that time. Everything else will follow." -Richard Buckminster Fuller
| ||||
2011:
The Disneyana Fan Club begins its annual 5-day convention at the Crowne Plaza Resort in Garden Grove, California.
It is reported that Jiko — The Cooking Place at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge has been named to Wine Enthusiast magazine's Top 100 best in wine and fine dining in the country. The Jiko wine list features one of the largest selections of South African vintages in North America.
1945:
Jeff Galloway, a former American Olympian and the author of Galloway's Book on
Running, is born in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has run nearly every Disney Marathon since its
inception in 1994 and is the official training consultant for runDisney. A lifetime runner, Galloway was an All-
American collegiate athlete and a member of the 1972 US Olympic Team in the 10,000 meters.
2012:
Comic-Con International 2012 kicks off at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. To help promote Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, a black & white stop-motion animated feature film, Disney and HGTV turns the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter lawn into a 3,500 square-foot HGTV Electrifying Garden. The exhibit showcases the beauty of black and white with more than 20 dark plants growing amid low-lying fog, pet tombstones and other striking oddities in the pet cemetery-themed garden. Disney also hosts a Q&A panel featuring the imaginative director of Frankenweenie Tim Burton. Presented by Disney, Frankenweenie will be released in U.S. theaters on October 5, 2012.
Other events during Comic-Con's 4 days (July 12-15) will include actresses Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis speaking at the "Oz: The Great and Powerful" panel, actress Sarah Silverman and actor John C. Reilly speaking at the "Wreck-It Ralph" panel, and actress Ginnifer Goodwin taking part in the "Once Upon A Time" panel.
July 12
"Spaceship Earth"
1967:
The Gnome-Mobile, a Walt Disney Productions comedy-fantasy film directed by Robert
Stevenson, is released to theaters. Based on a 1936 book by Upton Sinclair titled "The Gnomobile," the
film stars Walter Brennan, Matthew Garber, Karen Dotrice, and Richard Deacon. While driving through the forest with
his grandchildren, Elizabeth (Dotrice) and Rodney (Garber), lumber tycoon D.J. Mulrooney (Brennan) stumbles across
a duo of tiny gnomes. When the lumber company's head of security (Deacon) hears the story, he thinks that Mulrooney
has lost his mind, and has him committed. Now the grandchildren need to free their grandfather and save the little
gnomes! Veteran actor & comedian Ed Wynn plays Rufus the Gnome King in what is his final film role. (Wynn had
passed away on June 19, 1966.)
2019:
20th Century Fox and GoldDay Productions release the action comedy Stuber, distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Starring Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista, a mild-mannered Uber driver named Stu picks up Vic, a grizzled detective who is hot on the trail
of a sadistic, bloodthirsty terrorist.
1951:
Film and television producer-screenwriter Brian Grazer is born in Los Angeles, California. He and Ron Howard made the film Splash in 1984 (Touchstone's first release), which Grazer produced and co wrote. Splash
earned Grazer an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. In 1986, Grazer and Howard co-founded Imagine Entertainment, which became one of Hollywood's most prolific and successful production companies. Their Touchstone/
Disney films include "Ransom" (1996), "The Alamo" (2004), "Flight Plan" (2005) and "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (2018). Some of Imagine Entertainment's non-Disney films include "Angles & Demons," "The Da Vinci Code," "Curious George," "Cat In The Hat," "A Beautiful Mind," "The Nutty Professor," "Apollo 13" (which won Grazer the Producers Guild of America's Daryl F. Zanuck Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award) and "Parenthood."
1988:
Singer & actress Melissa O'Neil is born in Alberta, Canada. Her ABC-TV credits include playing Officer Lucy Chen on the procedural drama series The Rookie. (In 2005, O'Neil won the third season of Canadian Idol, the first Canadian female to do so.)
2020:
Actress Kelly Preston, wife of actor John Travolta, passes away at age 57 in Florida
(two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer). Appearing in more than sixty television and film productions, her Disney credits included Sky High (2005), Old Dogs (2009), and The Last Song (2010).
1991:
Both Disney animated features Dumbo (1941) and The Sword and the Stone (1963) are released to VHS and LaserDisc.
