Stella's Place

History.com

On October 16, 1923, Walt Disney and his brother Roy found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood, California. The studio, now known as the Walt Disney Company, has had an oversized impact on the entertainment industry and is now one of the largest media companies in the world.

A talented artist from a young age, Walt Disney drew cartoons for various publications and became interested in cel animation while working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company.

After his Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt in 1923, Walt moved to Los Angeles, where Roy was recovering from tuberculosis. While there, he finally sold a short film produced by Laugh-O-Gram, Alice’s Wonderland, and signed a contract to make six more such films. In order to produce the series, the brothers founded their company and persuaded both Virginia Davis, who played Alice, and their collaborator Ub Iwerks to join them in Hollywood.

Today’s date in 1917, dancer, courtesan and alleged spy Mata Hari is executed for espionage by a French firing squad at Vincennes outside of Paris.

History.com[. . .] It was in the City of Lights that Margaretha Zelle reinvented herself as an artist. Drawing on her experiences in the Dutch East Indies, she developed a “Hindu” dance act and began performing under the name “Lady Gresha MacLeod.” As part of each routine, she would cast off a series of colorful robes and veils until she was left nearly nude. “I never could dance well,” she later admitted. “People came to see me because I was the first who dared to show myself naked to the public.” To add to her mystique, Margaretha adopted the stage name “Mata Hari,” a Malay phrase meaning “eye of the day.”She was a courtesan to famous men, one of the ways she supported herself. These included officers in a variety of country’s armies. This eventually got her into trouble in WWI, and a French policeman decided to nail her for espionage. Was she guilty? I think the evidence was thin, but you can decide for yourself. Nevertheless, she was convicted and executed.