Phil Hartman in character as Chick Hazard, Private Eye, c. 1978
Phil Hartman (1948–1998) was a Canadian-born American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist. Born in Brantford, Ontario, Hartman and his family immigrated to the United States when he was ten. After graduating from California State University, Northridge with a degree in graphic arts, he designed album covers for bands such as Poco and America. Hartman joined the comedy group The Groundlings in 1975 and there helped comedian Paul Reubens develop his character Pee-wee Herman. Hartman co-wrote the screenplay for the film Pee-wee's Big Adventure and made recurring appearances on Reubens' show Pee-wee's Playhouse. Hartman became well-known in the late 1980s when he joined the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. He won fame for his impressions, particularly of President Bill Clinton, and stayed on the show for eight seasons. In 1995, after scrapping plans for his own variety show, he starred as Bill McNeal in the NBC sitcom NewsRadio. On May 28, 1998, Hartman was shot and killed by his wife while he slept in their California home. In the weeks following his death, Hartman was celebrated in a wave of tributes. Dan Snierson of Entertainment Weekly opined that Hartman was "the last person you'd expect to read about in lurid headlines in your morning paper ... a decidedly regular guy, beloved by everyone he worked with". (more...)
Security firm RSA announces that a breach in its SecurIDauthentication system will necessitate the replacement of almost 40 millionelectronic tokens(example pictured).
2008 – A Japanese man drove a truck into a crowd of pedestrians in the Akihabara district of Tokyo, then proceeded to stab at least 12 people with a dagger before being apprehended.
The sketch for the frontispiece to Original Stories from Real Life, the only complete work of children's literature by 18th-century British feministMary Wollstonecraft. The book was first published by Joseph Johnson in 1788; a second, illustrated edition, with engravings by William Blake based on his own drawings, was released in 1791 and remained in print for around a quarter of a century. The book begins with a frame story, which sketches out the education of two young girls by their maternal teacher Mrs. Mason, followed by a series of didactic tales. Wollstonecraft employed the burgeoning genre of children's literature to promote the education of women and an emerging middle-class ideology. She argued that women could be rational adults if educated properly as children (not a widely held belief in the 18th century).
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