TIL that up until 1960 , people went to the movies in a altogether different and confusing means .
1.The oldest material on Earth is actuallyolder than Earth itself. In 1969, the Murchison meteorite fell near Murchison, Australia, breaking apart into several pieces. Around a 100 kilograms of the meteorite were sent to different scientific institutions around the world to be studied. In January 2020, a study was published that revealed that within the fragments of the meteorite were microscopic grains that were between 4.6 to 4.9 billion years old – with the oldest grain being 7 billion years old. Making them both older than the formation of the sun and the Earth.
2.The first TV drama,The Queen’s Messenger, aired in 1928, the same year Mickey Mouse was introduced to the world. The production was an experiment between GE and a station in Schenectady,New York.
3.Thefirst gay kissin a film was in 1927’sWings. The movie is about two World War I combat pilots and close friends fighting for the same woman’s affection. But many have pointed out over the decades that the film has asubtle gay subtextabout the two being more than just friends.
4.There were still Civil War veterans alive during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. In fact, in 1938, Roosevelt met with them at a ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, at which he gave aspeechto dedicate the Eternal Light Peace Memorial. The ceremony was also captured onfilmand shown on newsreels in movie theaters.
5.The last person to collect a monthly pension from the Civil War died in 2020. Her name wasIrene Triplett, and she was the daughter of Mose Triplett, a soldier who fought for the Confederacy but later switched sides and fought for the Union. Mose was 83 years old when Irene was born in 1930, and after his death, she became his beneficiary. In case you were wondering, she collected $73.13 monthly from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
6.Before the 1980s, the Roswell UFO crash was basically an unknown event. While it was huge news in 1947, when it happened, it quickly got forgotten after theUnited StatesAir Force issued an almost immediateretractionthat they had not recovered a crashed UFO inRoswell, New Mexico, and that it had been debris from a downed weather balloon. In the early ’80s,the National Enquirerand the bookThe Roswell Incidentreintroduced the event and interest in it.
7.Sitcoms are a lot older than you might think. The veryfirst sitcomthat aired in the US started in 1947 and was calledMary Kay and Johnny.
8.Color televisionexistedin the ’50s — thetechnologyfor it had been in development since the ’40s. But, few people owned color TV sets because they were very pricey. A color television set cost about$1,000 in 1954, which is over $11,600 today if adjusted for inflation.
9.In 1960,Psychochanged how people watched movies in theaters — and it’s how we watch them today. Before 1960, it was common for people to buy a ticket and drop into a theater at any point during a movie. Movies played on loops repeatedly, so if you only caught the last half-hour of a movie, you would just stay in your seat and wait for it to play again so you could watch what you missed. Directors and studios hated that, but it’s how people were used to going to the movies. However, that posed a problem forPsycho.
10.Walt Disneyhated howAlice in Wonderlandturned out and refused to re-release the movie during his lifetime. However, in 1971, five years after Walt’s death, the movie became ahead film, and it had a hugecult following among college students, who would rent the 16-mm film and set up viewing parties. The movie’s renewed popularity convincedDisneyto re-release the film in 1974, where they really leaned into the psychedelic side of it (as you can see in the re-release poster below) and even used Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” in the radio ads for it.
11.George Atkinson opened thefirst video rental storein the world in LA in 1977. The idea came to him after he saw an ad for a company that was selling 20th Century Fox movies on VHS and Betamax at $50 each. George, who was running a business renting out Super 8 movies and projectors for parties, realized people would pay to rent videos. He proceeded to buy one copy on both VHS and Betamax of all 50 titles available and began taking ads out for his new rental business. Within a year, he had turned his rental business into a franchise called Video Station.
12.WhileThe Little Mermaidis credited withsavingDisney Animation, it’s rarely mentioned how it also opened up Disney to ahugenew revenue stream throughout the ’90s and ’00s. In 1990, the film was thefirstDisney movie to be released on home video following its theatrical run, which was considered a gamble for the company. Needless to say, the gamble paid off, asThe Little Mermaidwent on to become a huge seller on home video.
13.From 1977 until her death in 1994, Jackie Kennedy Onassis was a very successful and well-respectedbook editorat Doubleday. In 1983, executives at Doubleday came up with the idea of having Michael Jackson write his autobiography, and they asked Jackie to help get him to agree to sign and spearhead it. A mega-famous pop star’s memoir would not be the type of book Jackie would ever want to be involved with, but she understood that Doubleday having a huge commercial book would help get her passion projects published. By all accounts, she wouldgo on to regretever agreeing to get involved.
14.Hermès Birkin bags are arguably the most famous bags in the world and are notorious for their hefty price tags and scarcity. However, when the bags were first released in 1984, theyweren’t very popular, and a bag cost around$2,000(which is $6,000 today when adjusted for inflation).
15.In 2001,Sex and the Cityreally popularized Birkins in the iconic episode where Samantha tries to buy one. Later, in the show’s fifth season, Carrie is seen carrying a Birkin (which was used to hide Sarah Jessica Parker’s pregnancy while filming); however, Sarah Jessica revealed in an interview withVoguein 2022 that the bag was actually a fake.
16.It wasn’t just Netflix; there werevarious reasonswhy Blockbuster ended up going out of business. One reason was thepopularity of DVDs. Until the introduction of DVDs, studios relied on the movie rental market as their primary way of making money from the home entertainment market — withBlockbusteraccounting for nearly 50% of that revenue for them. To make it lucrative for both sides, the studios would give an exclusive window to video rental chains for new movie releases before they would put them on sale to the general public.
17.And lastly, yes, Blockbuster had a chance tobuy Netflixand turned it down. However, it wasn’t that the video rental chain was looking to purchase it. At the time, Netflix was in financial trouble and hoping that Blockbuster would buy them out.
