By Kim McGuire
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Disneyland is a theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney initially envisioned building a tourist attraction adjacent to his studios in Burbank to entertain fans who wished to visit; however, he soon realized that the proposed site was too small for the ideas that he had. After hiring the Stanford Research Institute to perform a feasibility study determining an appropriate site for his project, Disney bought a 160-acre (65 ha) site near Anaheim in 1953. The park was designed by a creative team hand-picked by Walt from internal and outside talent. They founded WED Enterprises, the precursor to today’s Walt Disney Imagineering. Construction began in 1954 and the park was unveiled during a special televised press event on the ABC Television Network on July 17, 1955. Since its opening, Disneyland has undergone expansions and major renovations, including the addition of New Orleans Square in 1966, Bear Country in 1972, Mickey’s Toontown in 1993, and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in 2019.[2] Additionally, Disney California Adventure Park opened in 2001 on the site of Disneyland’s original parking lot.
Disneyland has a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with 757 million visits since it opened (as of December 2021). In 2022, the park had approximately 16.9 million visits, making it the second most visited amusement park in the world that year, behind only Magic Kingdom, the very park it inspired. According to a 2005 Disney report, 65,700 jobs are supported by the Disneyland Resort, including about 20,000 direct Disney employees and 3,800 third-party employees (independent contractors or their employees). Disney announced “Project Stardust” in 2019, which included major structural renovations to the park to account for higher attendance numbers.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Monday, July 17, 2023
Question of the Day
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Puzzle of the Day
Born
- John Jacob Astor (businessman) –
- James Cagney (actor) –
- Art Linkletter (television personality) –
- Phyllis Diller (actress) –
- Nils Bohlin (inventor of seat belts) –
- Diahann Carroll (singer) –
- Lucie Arnaz (actress, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz) –
- David Hasselhoff (actor) –
- Mark Burnett (television producer) –
- Bitty Schram (actress) –
- Eric Moulds (football player) –
Died
- Billie Holiday (jazz & blues singer) –
- Ty Cobb (baseball player) –
- Joseph Maher (actor) –
- Hugh Reilly (actor) –
- Walter Cronkite (newscaster) –
- Morgan Paull (actor) –
- John Robert Lewis (American politician; civil rights leader) –
Events
- Florida formally ceded by Spain to the U.S.–
- First photo taken of star other than Sun (Vega), Harvard College Observatory–
- U.S. National Cemetery Act passed–
- In Boston, Massachusetts, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine established as the first university-based dental school in the U.S.–
- Disneyland Park opened in Anaheim, California–
- Contact with Surveyor 4 lost 2.5 minutes before Moon touchdown–
- U.S. Apollo 18 and U.S.S.R. Soyuz 19 docked with each other in space marking the first such link-up between spacecrafts from the two nations–
- Maiden flight of B-2 stealth bomber–
- Two triple plays were made by the Minnesota Twins in a game against the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox won 1-0–
- Last 400 Woolworth’s department stores closed–
- Tsunami in Indonesia–
Weather
- Atlanta, Georgia, received its 14th consecutive day of rain–
COURTESY www.almanac.com
