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- 07-April-1940, At the age of 84 : Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
- 31-December-1939, At the age of 137 : ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'', the first sound film version of the Victor Hugo classic, is released by RKO. It stars Charles Laughton as Quasimodo the hunchback, and Maureen O'Hara as Esmerelda the gypsy.
- 30-November-1935, At the age of 123 : The 1935 BritishBritishmade film ''Scrooge'', the first allalltalking film version of Charles Dickens classic, opens in the U.S. after its British release. Seymour Hicks plays Scrooge, a role he has played onstage hundreds of times. The film is criticized by some for not showing all of the ghosts physically, and quickly fades into obscurity. Widespread interest in it does not surface until the film is shown on television in the 1980s, in very shabbyshabbylooking prints. It is eventually restored on DVD, but the criticisms of it remain.
- 14-April-1935, At the age of 22 : Dust Bowl: The great dust storm, made famous by Woody Guthrie in his "dust bowl ballads", hits eastern New Mexico and Colorado, and western Oklahoma the hardest.
- 24-December-1934, At the age of 122 : Actor Lionel Barrymore begins what will become an annual tradition of the Golden Age of Radio playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in dramatizations of Charles Dickens's ''A Christmas Carol''. Barrymore continues playing Scrooge on radio until shortly before his death in 1954. He will also make a 7878RPM record album of the classic story, which will later be released on LP.
- 25-April-1932, At the age of 1362 : Two of the companions of Islam's Last Prophet Muhammad are moved from their graves upon informing of water in the graves in the dream of King Faisal of Iraq in Salmaan Paak, Iraq. Their names are Hazrat Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman and Hazrat Jabir ibn Abd-Allah.
- 19-April-1932, At the age of 79 : German art dealer Otto Wacker is sentenced to 19 months in prison for selling fraudulent paintings he attributed to Vincent van Gogh.
- 10-November-1928, At the age of 49 : Enthronement ceremony of Japanese Emperor Hirohito is held, after some two years since he actually took the Imperial throne on December 26, 1926, the following day of the demise of Emperor Taisho.
- 04-June-1917, At the age of 98 : The very first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for a biography (for ''Julia Ward Howe''). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work ''With Americans of Past and Present Days.'' Herbert Bayard Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the ''New York World.''
- 10-March-1914, At the age of 314 : Suffragette Mary Richardson damages Velazquez' painting ''Rokeby Venus'' in London's National Gallery with a meat chopper.
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