1901 - Academy Award-winning composer/songwriter, Disney Legend, and Disney's Music Supervisor Frank Churchill (whose music can be heard in such classics as Peter Pan, Dumbo, and Bambi) is born in Rumford, Maine. Churchill began his career playing piano in cinemas at the age of 15. After dropping out of medical school to pursue a career in music, he became accompanist at the Los Angeles radio station KNX (AM) in 1924. He joined Disney six years later. Some of his best known songs - "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?," "Whistle While You Work," and "Some Day My Prince Will Come."

1922 - Actor John Anderson, the voice of Mark Twain and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for Epcot's American Adventure attraction, is born in Clayton, Illinois. (A recurring Twilight Zone actor, he starred in four different episodes, "The Old Man in the Cave", "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville", "The Odyssey of Flight 33", and "A Passage for Trumpet".)

1924 - Disney's Alice Comedy, Alice Gets in Dutch is shown at the Piccadilly Theatre on Broadway in New York City. It is the first time an Alice Comedy is screened in a first-run Broadway theater.

1935 - Actor Jerry Orbach, the voice of Lumiere in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, is born in The Bronx, New York. (A Tony Award-winning actor, he is best known for his starring role as Detective Lennie Briscoe in the Law & Order television series.)

1955 - Eight time Academy Award-nominated film score composer Thomas Newman is born in Los Angeles, California. His Disney credits include Finding Nemo and WALL-E.

1955 - The Mickey Mouse Club airs on ABC-TV. Today is Circus Day.

1963 - A groundbreaking ceremony for the first Hollywood Museum takes place. Present are Rosalind Russell, Jack Warner, Gene Autry, and Walt Disney. (The museum will never be built.)

1963 - The TV series Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color airs "The Wahoo Bobcat."

1965 - As Disney has secretly purchased much of the land needed to build a new Florida theme park/resort, news of the project is leaked to the Orlando Sentinel.

1983 - Disney's Mickey's Christmas Carol, a twenty-four minute animated short film, is released in the United Kingdom. An adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol," the short features Scrooge McDuck as his namesake and inspiration Ebenezer Scrooge, Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit, and Donald Duck as Fred Honeywell - Ebenezer's nephew. The first animated short with Mickey Mouse since the 1953 The Simple Things, Mickey's Christmas Carol will be released in the U.S. the following December.

1995 - Buena Vista Pictures releases the Walt Disney Pictures feature film Frank and Ollie to U.S. theaters. The documentary features the lives and careers of Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (two of Walt's Nine Old Men).

1997 - Disney Channel debuts Bear in the Big Blue House (produced by The Jim Henson Company).

1998 - Disney's The Lion King II: Simba's Pride has its world premiere at the Wadsworth Theater in Los Angeles.

2001 - The 6th Epcot International Food and Wine Festival begins at Walt Disney World. More than 20 international food and wine marketplaces around World Showcase Lagoon represent different regions of the world.

2003 - Phil Collins and Tina Turner perform at the world premiere of Disney's Brother Bear held at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City.

2003 - Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is chosen as the movie of the year at the closing night of the seventh annual Hollywood International Film Festival in Beverly Hills, California.

2003 - One hundred forty-four PGA TOUR professionals and 144 amateurs take to the fairways at Disney's Palm and Magnolia golf courses for the 7-day Funai Classic at Walt Disney World Resort.

2006 - The Disney Channel Original Movie Return to Halloweentown premieres.

2006 - The Perry Meridian High School Marching Falcons band from Indiana perform on Disney World's Main Street as part of Disney's Magic Music Days.

2006 - The Nightmare Before Christmas is generally re-released in Disney Digital 3D (the first time an analog 2D film has totally been turned into a digital 3D film).

2007 - The Best of Both Worlds Tour, starring Miley Cyrus (as both herself and in character as Disney Channel's Hannah Montana) and featuring Jonas Brothers, pull into the i wirless Center arena in Moline, Illinois.

2008 - A new preview center opens at Disney's California Adventure. Designed to look like the interior of an artist's studio, Blue Sky Cellar features models, sketches, concept art and videos of a nighttime water show, Little Mermaid dark ride, Cars Land themed area and overall 1920s Los Angeles retheming plans for the Anaheim park.

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