2010

Frank Herbert in 1978

17

Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr., better known as Frank Herbert was born on October 8, 1920. Herbert’s first career was in journalism starting from the ’40s. Herbert started a research for a magazine article about the sand dunes near the city of Florence, Oregon, but he ended up with far too much material to write about and the interest in the desert derived from the research led him to develop during the early ’60s what became his masterpiece: “Dune”, a very long novel for the standards of the time, one of the reasons why after it was serialized in Analog in two parts it was then published in book only by a small publisher after being rejected by many other ones.

Autoritratto di Vincent Van Gogh

1

Starting from October 8 and until February 6, 2011 Rome is going to offer and extraordinary exhibition at the Vittoriano complex: a lot of Vincent Van Gogh paintings but also various ones by Gauguin, Cezanne, Pissarro and Millet. The title is “Vincent Van Gogh: timeless country and modern city” to point out the artist’s favourite subjects.

Charles Schulz in 1956 and a Charlie Brown drawing (Photo Roger Higgins, World Telegram staff photographer)

0

60 years ago the first Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz was published and it went on until February 13, 2000, the day after their author’s death.

This famous comic strip was originated by a previous work by Charles Schulz titled Lil’l Folks that was published on the author’s hometown newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, between 1947 and 1950. When the new, more sophisticated, comic strip started being published by United Feature Syndicate the name was changed to Peanuts to avoid confusion with other comic strips that were famous at the time.

Tony Curtis

0

The great actor Tony Curtis died tonight. Born on July 3, 1925 as Bernard Schwartz, son of Jewish Hungarian immigrants, Curtis served in the U.S.A. Navy during World War II and after his discharge he studied acting at New York.

0

50 years ago the famous animated series “The Flintstones” was broadcasted for the first time. The show is set in a version of the stone age where human beings live with animals from different ages such as dinosaurs and mammoths.