#january 1958

[vintagegoddesses3]

[theamericanpin-up]

Al Brule - January 1958 Esquire Inc. Calendar Illustration - American Pin-up Calendar Collection

[presleyspassions]

January 10,1958: Portrait of American rock singer Elvis Presley wearing a military uniform, lying on an army cot with his hands folded across his chest.

[federer7]

Mary McLaughlin. Vogue January 1958

Photo: Richard Rutledge

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

Anita Denise Baker: January 26, 1958

[rabbitcruiser]

(Inter)National Lego Day 

Construct creative builds with this beloved, versatile toy, enjoy the hilarious LEGO Movie or visit a LEGOLAND theme park with your family.

Lego – have you played with it? These little plastic colored bricks have been sparking creativity and joy in both children and adults of all ages for almost 70 years! Small but mighty, Lego bricks inspire creativity, and thanks to their ingenious design, they can be used to make virtually anything you can imagine, from cars to dinosaurs, houses to aliens – if you can dream it, it can probably be built out of Lego.

As such a versatile toy that appeals to all ages of people, it’s not surprising that Lego is now recognized as the World’s Most Powerful Brand, towering over Google, Nike, and Ferrari to claim the top spot in 2017, but as with most gigantic companies, Lego started from humble origins and International Lego Day marks the very beginning.

History of Lego

International Lego Day is held on the very same day that Danish carpenter, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, first submitted his patent for the original Lego brick in 1958. Like no other brick that had come before this toy brick would have a sophisticated interlocking brick system, making it strong, versatile, and less likely to fall apart when simply knocked over.

Not one to mess around, Godtfred made sure not only to patent the design for his single Lego brick, but also to patent the concept of multiple bricks being used together in a building system, and this protected his design from being ripped off by competitors. Although this day is often seen as the birthplace of Lego as we know it, the company itself was in fact founded by Godtfred in 1932, creating a variety of wooden toys, and taking the name Lego from the Danish words “LEg GOdt” which translate to “play well”.

Ahead of their time, Lego was one of the very first toy manufacturing companies to buy an injection mold machine with which to create plastic toys, a move which shortly led them to create the very first plastic Lego brick in 1949. In the 17 years from 1949 to 1966, Lego grew exponentially into a global company that was retailing in 42 countries. They now boasted a product range that now contained 57 Lego sets and 25 Lego vehicles and with factories that were producing more than 706 million Lego elements each year – but the company didn’t stop growing.

In 1967 the LEGOLAND Band was established and in 1968, the very first LEGOLAND opened its doors to the public, attracting more than 625,000 visitors in its first season. Today there are 9 LEGOLANDS across Europe, Asia and the US, with a further three due to open in the next few years.

Nowadays Lego is a truly global enterprise, its strong brand identity, and still unique simplistic design, keeps it a favorite amongst children, while its history and versatility make it even more collectible to adults.

International Lego Day Timeline

1932 LEGO founder starts a woodworking shop in Denmark

In a small woodworking shop in Billund, Ole Kirk Christiansen makes all types of furniture and household items. But his favorite creations are toys for his sons, so he eventually names his company LEGO–a combination of two Danish words meaning “play well”.

1946-1949 Plastic bricks are first sold by the LEGO company

A wood shortage following WWII makes manufacturers look for alternative ways to create products. Christiansen gets his hands on the first plastic-injection molding machine in Denmark and starts selling the Automatic Binding Brick, the predecessor to today’s stackable blocks.

January 28, 1958 LEGO patent application is submitted

With Christainsen’s son, Godtfred, at the helm, the company submits their patent application for the tubes and studs that would add stability and connectivity to the plastic blocks. This anniversary coincides with International LEGO Day each year.

1976 LEGO minifigures are introduced

Realizing that the sets might be more fun if a human dimension was added, the company releases the iconic yellow-faced humanoid bricks.

2014 LEGO feature film is released

When watching his son play with LEGOs, a Hollywood producer gets the idea to make an animated movie. It is a huge hit and grosses more than $450 million, with more films coming in the following years.

10 super-fun facts about Lego

In 2016 LandRover set the World Record for the largest piece of Lego construction with their huge 43-foot-high replica of Tower Bridge. This monumental structure used 5,805,846 individual pieces of Lego which would have stretched all the way to Paris in France if laid out end to end.

If Lego Minifigures were to be classed as a population, they’d be the largest population in the world! With more than 4 billion of them in total.

There are so many Lego bricks in the world, that it’s estimated that they outnumber people 80 to 1.

Despite the first Lego brick having been made in 1958, you could still interlock one with a Lego brick-built today – the design hasn’t changed a bit!

In 2009, James May created a house entirely out of Lego! The house took more than 3.3 million bricks to make and even had a working toilet, a bed, and a shower!

Lego is now so popular that 7 sets are sold every second.

Although Lego is played by both girls and boys, women and men, they still have a bit of a way to go before they reach gender equality with roughly 86% of their Lego Minifigures being male.

If you were to collect all the Lego bricks in the world and stack them together then they would be 2,386,065 miles tall!

Although Lego makes toys they are also classed as the world’s biggest tire manufacturer, making over 400 million tires each year to keep their fleet of various lego vehicles rolling.

Although Lego was the first to patent the Lego brick that we know today, they didn’t technically invent them. The story has it that the salesman who came to sell Godtfred his first plastic injection mold machine was carrying an example interlocking brick in his pocket which had been designed and patented by Hilary Fisher Page. Godtfred improved on the design by perforating the brick and adding tubes on the bottom to help tighten the connection.

How to celebrate International Lego Day

Whether you’re five or sixty-five, you’re never too old to celebrate International Lego Day. Here are a few things that you could do to celebrate the day:

Play with Lego! Perhaps the most obvious thing to do on International Lego Day is to play with Lego of course! Grab your old lego set, or buy one especially for the day and sit down for a few hours of relaxing and creative fun. If you now have children yourself then make a sculpture together and take a moment to remember how many generations have grown up with Lego by their side.

Watch the Lego Movie! Lego has become so iconic that it even has its own movie dedicated to it. In fact, there are now two! Fun for all the family, cozy up on the sofa with some popcorn and watch as Lego figures come to life in stunning animation.

Visit LEGOLAND. And finally, for perhaps the most immersive Lego experience, pack your bags and take a trip to one of the many LEGOLAND theme parks. Be wowed by the impressive Lego structures and ride the exhilarating roller coasters for a day you’ll never forget.

Source

[thecinamonroe]

Marilyn Monroe posing for a Polio vaccination campaign, January 28, 1958. Photo by Milton Greene.

[batboyblog]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2025!

It's January 1st 2025 which means it's my favorite unsung holiday! Public Domain Day! This is the day once a year when, in the US, copyrights expire and things enter the public domain, meaning they belong to everyone! even you, Steve!

American copyright for books, movies, art work, and musical compositions (but not recordings, more on that later) runs for 95 years (way too long!) so today works published in 1929 join us in the public domain.

So whats free? so glad you asked.

Popeye the Sailor Man

Many people assume Popeye originated as a cartoon character but thats not true, he comes from a comic strip. The strip was called Thimble Theatre and Popeye was something of a late addition. Thimble Theatre was first published in 1919, so Popeye's girlfriend Olive Oyl has been in the public domain since before the big 20 year copyright freeze of 1998-2019. Popeye first appeared as a minor character 10 years into the strip's run but was so popular he soon took over and the strip would be renamed Popeye less than 5 years later. Now as always whats public is only what appears in 1929, later developments, remain copyrighted. Such as, while Popeye always had super strength its not till 1932 his superpowers were tied to eating spinach, and Olive Oyl originally had a different boyfriend named Ham Gravy, who she dumped for Popeye when he became the main character. It looks like Popeye is following tradition for famous now public domain characters and getting a quicky horror movie this year.

Tintin!

This is personally very exciting as someone who grew up with the Belgian boy detective. Like Popeye I expect a lot of people don't know that Tintin started off as a weekly comic strip. Indeed Tintin appeared as a part of a weekly youth supplement in the Catholic newspaper The Twentieth Century. Any ways, Tintin was first published in there in January 1929, and soon would start what would become the first Tintin story, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Now only part of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was published in 1929, the story line wrapped up in May 1930, so only those 1929 stories and what appears in them is free and clear and Tintin was published in black and white not color. Tintin's author Hergé had no idea what he was doing and was really learning on the job so In The Land of the Soviets is generally seen as his weakest outing and the only one he never opted to redraw in later years. Even so it's nice to see the character free in the world. No word on if Tintin will star in a horror movie.

Buck Rogers (but not really)

The original futuristic space man was published, again a comic strip, in 1929 which means he should enter the public domain today, but he won't. That's because he already is public domain! Before the Copyright Act of 1976 copyright was 28 years with the option to renew for another 28 years. The copyright on the original comic strips was not renewed so ran out at the end of 28 years, 1958. So Buck Rogers has been free and clear for close to 70 years now, whatever you hear about him today.

What else?

Famously last year Mickey Mouse entered the public domain, but all the entered public domain was one (maybe two) animated short, Steamboat Willie. Well this year a dozen Mickey Mouse animated shorts enter the public domain, including the first time Mickey has his iconic white gloves, and the first time Mickey speaks (the first thing Mickey Mouse ever says, voiced by Walt Disney himself, is "Hot dogs! Hot dogs!" in case you were wondering) This will give creators much more to work with if they want to use Mickey in their works which is exciting.

Speaking of Walt Disney, The Skeleton Dance is entering public domain, you likely don't know the title but I suspect you've seen at least part of it at some point

so look for this showing up on TVs in the backgrounds of films and TV shows in the next year or so

Books

The iconic novels of World War I, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front enter public domain. In fact All Quiet on the Western Front entered public domain last year, but only in the original German, the 1929 translation by Arthur Wesley Wheen is whats entered the public domain now. John Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery (always get an Agatha Christie novel on this list for the rest of our lives). Dashiell Hammett published both Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, later made into one of the greatest films of all time, in 1929. Future children's book author E. B. White (who's go on to write Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little) and future New Yorker cartoonist and humorist James Thurber teamed up to write the delightfully titled Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do a book of spoof essays making fun of popular books on Freudian sexual theories at the time. The Roman Hat Mystery the first of the long running Ellery Queen mysteries was published, Queen would keep publishing mysteries into the 1970s (and Ellery Queen was a pen name for two people). Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica and Oliver La Farge's Laughing Boy also came out in 1929 and are in the public domain now. There's much else but those are the highlights sorry if I missed your favorite 1929 novel.

Movies

Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille's first movies with sound, Blackmail and Dynamite respectively, came out in 1929. Marx Brothers' first feature film The Cocoanuts joins the public domain. Other comedy land marks are Harold Lloyd's first sound film, Welcome Danger and Buster Keaton's last silent film, Spite Marriage (which Keaton also directed). John Ford's first sound film, The Black Watch, which also is 21 year old John Wayne's first appearance in a film, as an uncredited extra, he worked in the art department. Hallelujah the first studio film to have an all black cast came out that year. Also worth noting is The Hollywood Revue of 1929 a singing and dancing review, one of the earliest and the movie that popularized the song Singin’ in the Rain, maybe the first time a movie made a song a hit.

Musical compositions

musical compositions, ie the lyrics and musical notations you might see on sheet music are governed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and music written in 1929 is public domain. Music recordings are governed by a whole different law (we'll get there). Songs written in 1929 include Singin’ in the Rain by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Black and Blue by the legendary Fats Waller, What Is This Thing Called Love? by Cole Porter, Tiptoe Through the Tulips by Alfred Dubin, You Were Meant for Me by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, and also Happy Days Are Here Again by Jack Yellen which would become FDR's campaign theme song in 1932.

Art!

a number of pieces by Salvador Dalí including:

Illumined Pleasures

The Accommodations of Desire

The Great Masturbator

are entering the public domain as is René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images.

Art is hard because while movies and books are clearly "published" and put on sale, what counts as "published" for a piece of art? the law is not totally sure.

Musical Recordings

as I promised, we got here. Till 2017 there were no federal laws governing the copyright of music recordings before the 1970s, it was governed by a confusing patchwork of state laws and it was not totally clear what was or was not free and clear even from the very earliest recordings ever. Now the term of a music recording's copyright is set at 100 years (way too long) so music recorded in 1924 is now public domain such as. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen by Marian Anderson, Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me) by Louis Armstrong, California Here I Come by Al Jolson, Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, Shreveport Stomp by Jelly Roll Morton, Mama’s Gone, Good Bye by Ray Miller, and It Had To Be You by Marion Harris. Now many recordings a lot less famous can finally be preserved and digitized to save them for the next 100 years. Many abandoned works are literally rotting away since without the copyright holder's permission digitizing a work isn't legal.

[vintagegoddesses3]

[chicinsilk]

US Vogue January 1, 1958

A blue wool suit by Marquise, in Meyer wool. Pumps, Newton Elkin, blue petal hat, by Sally Victor.

Tailleur en laine bleu par Marquise, en laine Meyer. Escarpins, Newton Elkin, chapeau à pétales bleus, par Sally Victor.

Photo Karen Radkai.

[theamericanpin-up]

Bill Randall - "Gwenn" - January 1958 Date Book Calendar Illustration - Kemper-Thomas Calendar Co. - American Pin-up Calendar Collection

[reasonsforhope]

"Thousands of trees have been planted by volunteers as part of a new temperate rainforest in south Devon.

More than 2,500 native trees have been planted so far this winter at Devon Wildlife Trust's Bowden Pillars site near Totnes.

The charity said as well as storing carbon, temperate rainforests supported "a super-abundance" of wildlife.

The trust is transforming 30 hectares (75 acres) of sheep-grazed fields into a landscape with 70% tree cover and open glades and wildflower-rich meadows.

The charity said more than a 100 local people planted species including oak, rowan, alder, hazel, birch, willow and holly.

Nick Biggs, an 83-year-old volunteer, said he got involved with the project after being inspired by his apprenticeship with the Forestry Commission in 1958.

"That introduced me to the environment," he said.

"I was really keen to carry on with it and it's good for your fitness just to get out and do something."

The trust said in decades to come the new trees would form a temperate rainforest with high rainfall and humidity.

Helen Aldis from Moor Trees, which supplied some of the saplings, said many had been gathered locally.

She said: "The oak that's going in today is from acorns that we've gathered on Dartmoor that have come back to our tree nursery.

"Our volunteers process those, pop them into the root trainers and then they come out a year or two later to become the woodlands of the future."

'Incredibly rare habitat'

The trust said the damp woodlands used to cover large parts of Britain, but today amount to just 1% of its land area.

Project leader Claire Inglis said: "It's an incredibly rare habitat and we've lost a great deal of it over the years.

"Across the UK there is around 13% woodland cover but in Devon it's actually 11%, so it's lower than the national average."

The trust said the forests supported a variety of birds such as pied flycatchers, woodcock and redstarts, while the damp conditions meant mosses, liverworts, lichens, ferns and fungi thrived on the trees and forest floor.

Ms Inglis added: "The mix of young trees in amongst grass pastures and hedges, along with our commitment not to use pesticides and artificial fertilisers, will be better for local moths, butterflies and bees, along with farmland birds such as yellowhammers and barn owls."

The trust said 7,000 trees would be planted in the first winter with more planned in the future."

-via BBC, January 30, 2025

[billykildi]

Nena von Schlebrügge- supermodella e madre di Uma Thurman

Modella degli anni '60 (Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, ecc.) e attrice: questa è la madre di Uma Thurman.

Nena è nata nel 1941 da madre svedese e padre tedesco, a Città del Messico.

[citizenscreen]

Johnny Cash played his first-ever prison concert at San Quentin on January 1, 1958.

[rabbitcruiser]

(Inter)National Lego Day 

Construct creative builds with this beloved, versatile toy, enjoy the hilarious LEGO Movie or visit a LEGOLAND theme park with your family.

Lego – have you played with it? These little plastic colored bricks have been sparking creativity and joy in both children and adults of all ages for almost 70 years! Small but mighty, Lego bricks inspire creativity, and thanks to their ingenious design, they can be used to make virtually anything you can imagine, from cars to dinosaurs, houses to aliens – if you can dream it, it can probably be built out of Lego.

As such a versatile toy that appeals to all ages of people, it’s not surprising that Lego is now recognized as the World’s Most Powerful Brand, towering over Google, Nike, and Ferrari to claim the top spot in 2017, but as with most gigantic companies, Lego started from humble origins and International Lego Day marks the very beginning.

History of Lego

International Lego Day is held on the very same day that Danish carpenter, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, first submitted his patent for the original Lego brick in 1958. Like no other brick that had come before this toy brick would have a sophisticated interlocking brick system, making it strong, versatile, and less likely to fall apart when simply knocked over.

Not one to mess around, Godtfred made sure not only to patent the design for his single Lego brick, but also to patent the concept of multiple bricks being used together in a building system, and this protected his design from being ripped off by competitors. Although this day is often seen as the birthplace of Lego as we know it, the company itself was in fact founded by Godtfred in 1932, creating a variety of wooden toys, and taking the name Lego from the Danish words “LEg GOdt” which translate to “play well”.

Ahead of their time, Lego was one of the very first toy manufacturing companies to buy an injection mold machine with which to create plastic toys, a move which shortly led them to create the very first plastic Lego brick in 1949. In the 17 years from 1949 to 1966, Lego grew exponentially into a global company that was retailing in 42 countries. They now boasted a product range that now contained 57 Lego sets and 25 Lego vehicles and with factories that were producing more than 706 million Lego elements each year – but the company didn’t stop growing.

In 1967 the LEGOLAND Band was established and in 1968, the very first LEGOLAND opened its doors to the public, attracting more than 625,000 visitors in its first season. Today there are 9 LEGOLANDS across Europe, Asia and the US, with a further three due to open in the next few years.

Nowadays Lego is a truly global enterprise, its strong brand identity, and still unique simplistic design, keeps it a favorite amongst children, while its history and versatility make it even more collectible to adults.

International Lego Day Timeline

1932 LEGO founder starts a woodworking shop in Denmark

In a small woodworking shop in Billund, Ole Kirk Christiansen makes all types of furniture and household items. But his favorite creations are toys for his sons, so he eventually names his company LEGO–a combination of two Danish words meaning “play well”.

1946-1949 Plastic bricks are first sold by the LEGO company

A wood shortage following WWII makes manufacturers look for alternative ways to create products. Christiansen gets his hands on the first plastic-injection molding machine in Denmark and starts selling the Automatic Binding Brick, the predecessor to today’s stackable blocks.

January 28, 1958 LEGO patent application is submitted

With Christainsen’s son, Godtfred, at the helm, the company submits their patent application for the tubes and studs that would add stability and connectivity to the plastic blocks. This anniversary coincides with International LEGO Day each year.

1976 LEGO minifigures are introduced

Realizing that the sets might be more fun if a human dimension was added, the company releases the iconic yellow-faced humanoid bricks.

2014 LEGO feature film is released

When watching his son play with LEGOs, a Hollywood producer gets the idea to make an animated movie. It is a huge hit and grosses more than $450 million, with more films coming in the following years.

10 super-fun facts about Lego

In 2016 LandRover set the World Record for the largest piece of Lego construction with their huge 43-foot-high replica of Tower Bridge. This monumental structure used 5,805,846 individual pieces of Lego which would have stretched all the way to Paris in France if laid out end to end.

If Lego Minifigures were to be classed as a population, they’d be the largest population in the world! With more than 4 billion of them in total.

There are so many Lego bricks in the world, that it’s estimated that they outnumber people 80 to 1.

Despite the first Lego brick having been made in 1958, you could still interlock one with a Lego brick-built today – the design hasn’t changed a bit!

In 2009, James May created a house entirely out of Lego! The house took more than 3.3 million bricks to make and even had a working toilet, a bed, and a shower!

Lego is now so popular that 7 sets are sold every second.

Although Lego is played by both girls and boys, women and men, they still have a bit of a way to go before they reach gender equality with roughly 86% of their Lego Minifigures being male.

If you were to collect all the Lego bricks in the world and stack them together then they would be 2,386,065 miles tall!

Although Lego makes toys they are also classed as the world’s biggest tire manufacturer, making over 400 million tires each year to keep their fleet of various lego vehicles rolling.

Although Lego was the first to patent the Lego brick that we know today, they didn’t technically invent them. The story has it that the salesman who came to sell Godtfred his first plastic injection mold machine was carrying an example interlocking brick in his pocket which had been designed and patented by Hilary Fisher Page. Godtfred improved on the design by perforating the brick and adding tubes on the bottom to help tighten the connection.

How to celebrate International Lego Day

Whether you’re five or sixty-five, you’re never too old to celebrate International Lego Day. Here are a few things that you could do to celebrate the day:

Play with Lego! Perhaps the most obvious thing to do on International Lego Day is to play with Lego of course! Grab your old lego set, or buy one especially for the day and sit down for a few hours of relaxing and creative fun. If you now have children yourself then make a sculpture together and take a moment to remember how many generations have grown up with Lego by their side.

Watch the Lego Movie! Lego has become so iconic that it even has its own movie dedicated to it. In fact, there are now two! Fun for all the family, cozy up on the sofa with some popcorn and watch as Lego figures come to life in stunning animation.

Visit LEGOLAND. And finally, for perhaps the most immersive Lego experience, pack your bags and take a trip to one of the many LEGOLAND theme parks. Be wowed by the impressive Lego structures and ride the exhilarating roller coasters for a day you’ll never forget.

Source

[derangedrhythms]

Girl, aging girl, is haunted by own nothingness [...]

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath ⁠— 26th January 1958