The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were a prominent and iconic part of the New York City skyline for nearly 30 years, and as such, they appeared in a vast number of films and television shows before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Their presence in these works often served as a visual shorthand for New York City itself, a symbol of American financial power and a modern architectural marvel.
After the attacks, many films and TV shows either digitally removed the towers from their footage or were edited to remove them entirely, making these pre-9/11 cinematic appearances a poignant form of historical record.
Jatech was a California-based design and technology firm that, in the early 1990s, developed a “disappearing car door” or “rotary drop door” system. This innovative design was intended to solve the problem of traditional car doors, which require a lot of space to swing open and can be awkward in tight parking spots.
Unlike conventional doors that swing outward or other alternative designs like gullwing or scissor doors that swing upward, Jatech’s door was a motorized system that slid downward into a sealed compartment beneath the car’s body. The door was mounted on a track system and would lower into a reinforced undercarriage. When a button was pressed, the door’s window would retract, and the entire door would descend into the car's sills, leaving a completely open side for easy entry and exit.
Jatech claimed that its design had several advantages. It eliminated the need for swing-out space, making it ideal for cramped urban environments and tight parking spots. The company insisted the system improved a car’s structural integrity and crashworthiness. Jatech argued the doors would allow for easier escape in emergencies, as they wouldn't be blocked by other vehicles or objects.
The company received some early interest from major automakers like Ford and General Motors. The most famous prototype was a modified Lincoln Mark VIII, but the system was also demonstrated on a Ford Explorer and a Chevrolet Corvette. The Lincoln Mark VIII prototype, in particular, gained attention and became the subject of a viral video years later.
Despite its intriguing design and apparent advantages, the Jatech disappearing door never made it to mass production. The system required a complete redesign of the car’s understructure to create the compartment for the door, which would have driven up production costs significantly. The motorized system, exposed to road grime, debris, and weather, raised concerns about long-term reliability and maintenance.
While Jatech claimed enhanced safety, critics were skeptical, particularly about what would happen in a minor fender-bender or if the mechanism failed, potentially trapping occupants inside. A manual override was reportedly part of the design, but the heavy doors would have been difficult to move without the motor’s assistance.
The doors were completely featureless on the inside, as the space was needed for the mechanism. This meant no storage pockets, speakers, or other standard door panel features.
By the 2010s, Jatech had ceased operations, leaving behind only a handful of prototypes and a legendary viral video that continues to fascinate car enthusiasts. The company’s name has, in a way, lived up to its invention's fate, having largely disappeared from the public eye.
At the 1992 Junior World Championships in Seoul, South Korea, Kenyan runner Josephat Machuka was disqualified from the 10,000m race after punching the Ethiopian athlete Haile Gebrselassie just before the finish line as Gebrselassie sprinted to victory. The unsportsmanlike act, which occurred in the final meters of the race in Seoul, was captured on video and remains a memorable moment in athletics history.
Though Machuka and Gebrselassie later resolved their conflict, with Gebrselassie going on to a legendary career and Machuka also having a successful, albeit overshadowed, career in distance running.
In The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), one of the most memorable moments isn’t a gunfight but a dance. Actor Russ Tamblyn, only 21 at the time, performs a remarkable acrobatic routine known as the “shovel dance.”
In the film, Tamblyn plays Eddie, a young townsman eager to prove himself. When the community gathers at a local barn dance, he suddenly takes the floor, grabs a shovel as a prop, and launches into an energetic number. He flips, leaps, and spins with extraordinary athleticism, balancing and dancing with the shovel as though it were a partner.
Glenn Ford assumed the number would be the kind of brief musical interlude that often appeared in musicals but when he saw Tamblyn’s extraordinary routine, he was astonished. Ford, who was married to esteemed tap dancer and actress Eleanor Powell, was fond of dance numbers but felt Tamblyn’s number was out of place in the film.
As Tamblyn later recalled Ford said “This is a little western here and this guy is coming in and trying to do a Donald O’Connor all over the walls.” Ford tried to get the number cut from the film and it was said to have been cut from the preview but the credits still contained a reference to Russ Tamblyn’s dance number and the audience demanded to see it.
The number was reinserted into the picture and ended up being one of the highlights of the film.
Russ Tamblyn, known for his roles as an actor who could also dance, was not formally trained in dance but had a background in tumbling and acrobatics. He considered himself an “actor who danced,” and this is evident in the raw, dynamic, and physical nature of his performances, including the “shovel dance” and his famous roles in musicals like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and West Side Story (1961).
The Japanese version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is titled “思春期の匂い” (Shishunki no nioi), which translates to “Smell of Adolescence” or “Smell of Puberty.”
While Nirvana’s song is in English, this Japanese title is the most common way to refer to the song in Japanese. There are also Japanese covers of the song, including one by Shiena Nishizawa and a SoundCloud cover by Tåmä0k1 Fum1h1r0.
In 2001, Ozzy Osbourne met his idol Paul McCartney — a dream come true for the Prince of Darkness, who credits The Beatles as his greatest inspiration.
The meeting reportedly took place during a high-profile event in Los Angeles.
Ozzy was reportedly very nervous and emotional about the meeting. The encounter was captured on camera, showing a genuinely starstruck Ozzy embracing McCartney. He famously told McCartney, “Finally I get to meet you, it’s great to meet you, man. It’s been a lifetime ambition of mine... you guys made me start music.” He later described the experience as “like meeting Jesus Christ” and a “dream come true.”
The moment began when a stumbling Ozzy was in the studio. He gets wind of The Beatle lurking around the halls and makes his move. But, in fact, the story started a little earlier in the day as Ozzy had asked McCartney to play bass on his track.
“Meeting Paul McCartney was f***king phenomenal,” Osbourne said. “I was in the studio at the same time as him and tried to get him to play bass on one of my songs. But he said he couldn’t improve on the bassline that was there. I said, ‘Are you kidding? You could piss on the record and I’d make it my life’.”
That’s pretty much where the footage picks up and sees Macca and Ozzy start swapping stories and Ozzy in particular gushing about The Beatles and the effect they had on his life. For a man who has spent much of his life either enjoying or enduring darkness, it feels a little jarring to see his face light up like a small child—but that’s exactly what he is in this moment. He’s not Ozzy Osbourne, not the lead singer of Black Sabbath, not the founding father of Heavy Metal, nor The Prince of Darkness, this is purely John Michael Osbourne meeting his idol.
It’s a touching moment between two legends and is certainly worth a watch if only to feel better about the next time you get starstruck when talking to your own musical idol. At least the Prince of Darkness can get tongue-tied too.
Osbourne died on Tuesday just weeks after his “Back to the Beginning” tribute show. His family confirmed his death in a statement posted to his Instagram.
In October 1976, a Washington D.C. area wedding band called Sixpence performed “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, nearly a year after the song’s release. This performance, particularly their rendition of the song’s operatic section, was noted for its impressive execution by a five-member vocal group without a dedicated lead or rhythm guitarist. The Washington Postreported that the band rehearsed the song for a month or two before performing it live.
Sixpence, a band known for their wedding covers, played at the Bastille Club in Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C. The band’s ability to perform the complex harmonies and operatic sections of “Bohemian Rhapsody” using only their voices was a highlight of their live shows. The band’s performance was particularly notable considering they did not have a lead or rhythm guitar.
The band’s rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” was so well-received that it reportedly stopped wedding guests in their tracks, with some describing it as like watching a “flying trapeze act” to see if they could pull it off. Sixpence continued performing for over 20 years, disbanding around 1992.
Leo XIII was the Pope when the motion picture camera was invented, and it wasn’t too long before he consented to being filmed. Within a few years, not only would he appear in this movie, but in a series for Biograph. This remains, interestingly, the first time a Pope was filmed. Despite claims that people feared cameras would steal their souls or that the images of trains on screen would send people rushing for the exits, movies were accepted and adopted very quickly, seen as a way of bringing images and messages to people in a way that even the printed word could not; many could not read, but few could not see.
Leo XIII, who was born in 1810 and was thus 86 years old in 1896, is considered the earliest-born person ever to be captured on film.
It’s long been believed that they were recorded in the Vatican gardens by early Italian filmmaker Vittorio Calcina, who was a colleague of the legendary French brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière. Drawing on Vatican archival material, however, Italian historian Gianluca Della Maggiore has shown that William Kennedy Laurie Dickson actually shot the images on behalf of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which had been founded in the United States the year before and was the first company in the country devoted entirely to film production and exhibition.
Dickson, who had been born in Brittany, France, to British-American parents, relocated to the United States in 1879 at the age of 19 and found a job with famed inventor Thomas Edison, working on early versions of the motion picture camera. Eventually he left Edison’s group and joined the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, where he was assigned the project of filming the pope.
Della Maggiore found a handwritten letter in the Vatican archives from then-Monsignor Francesco Salesio Della Volpe, a papal aide who would later go on to become a cardinal, addressed to then-Archbishop Sebastiano Martinelli, the apostolic delegate to the United States, who would also eventually become a cardinal. In the latter, Della Volpe provided details on the three filming sessions Dickson conducted with Pope Leo XIII in June and July of 1896.
Among other things, Pope Leo XIII blessed the Biograph camera used by Dickson to record the images, marking the first time a pope blessed a motion picture device. The brief video is made up of three segments: Pope Leo XIII on a throne in the Vatican gardens, the pontiff arriving in a horse-drawn carriage, and then Leo XIII taking a seat on a bench flanked by aides.
According to Della Maggiore, subsequent references to Dickson were omitted from Vatican accounts of the filming, in large part because of irritation with what was seen as the inappropriate commercial exploitation of the images, including exhibitions at fairs and other settings in which other, raunchier films were also shown.
In a largely forgotten 1901 essay for Royal magazine, Dickson briefly described his experience in the Vatican.
“I found the pope a most lovable man, and owe much to his kindness,” Dickson wrote. “He took a great interest in the pictures, and on one occasion, having received some prints from London, I showed them to him. He was delighted, and exclaimed ‘Wonderful! Wonderful! See me blessing!’”
Dickson added that “none of the views may be shown in a place of secular amusement, nor without the authority of the Church,” the conditions upon which the Vatican would later remove Dickson and his American company from the equation.
“Short Shorts” is a song written and performed by Tom Austin, Bill Crandell, Bill Dalton, and Bob Gaudio, members of The Royal Teens. The song became an anthem of the late 1950s, epitomizing the era’s youth culture and fashion. It reached #2 on the U.S. R&B chart and #3 on the U.S. pop chart in 1958. The group originally released the track on the small New York label Power Records in 1957.
The term “short shorts” in the song referred specifically to very short cutoff jeans as worn by teenage girls. The term appears to have originated with Bob Gaudio and Tom Austin. According to the group, they coined the term in 1957, and hit on using it as a song theme and title that summer when they saw two girls in cutoffs leaving a local teen spot.
“We were practicing one night at my house, and one guy started putting some notes together,” Dalton explained in an interview with Newsweek. “Another guy picked it up and added some more. Before we knew it we had a tune. During the next three weeks we added and changed and polished until we had it the way we wanted it. Later, the four of us were riding down the street in Bergenfield ... It was a warm day and we saw this girl in shorts walking down the street. That gave us the idea for the lyrics.”
Nirvana performed “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Territorial Pissings” on Saturday Night Live on January 11, 1992. But the historic made for TV moment came during the end credits of the show when Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl and Kurt Cobain decided to “piss off the rednecks and homophobes,” by French kissing each other.
SNL refused to show the Nirvana kiss on future repeats of the episode. When asked about the kiss Novoselic was quoted as saying that the kiss was “spontaneous” and not planned.
Following Nirvana’s performance at SNL’s show, the following Monday, students with Kool-Aid pink hair were spotted in schools across America. Kurt hadn’t washed his hair in a week and had dyed his hair a strawberry and grape Kool-Aid color that made his hair look like it was covered in “dried blood.”
In 1984, Talking Heads delivered Stop Making Sense. Between frontman David Byrne’s iconic big suit, some suitably zany dance moves, and endlessly danceable tunes, it was considered to be the greatest concert film of all time.
The film was shot over four nights in December 1983 at Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre while Talking Heads were on tour promoting their 1983 album, Speaking in Tongues. Stop Making Sense includes performances of the early Talking Heads single, “Psycho Killer” (1977), through to their most recent hit at the time, “Burning Down the House” (1983).
Byrne’s dance during the song “Once in a Lifetime” is particularly memorable. He moves in exaggerated, robotic ways, combining twitchy gestures, loose-limbed shaking, and expressive facial expressions. These movements reflect the existential and surreal themes of the song, creating a unique visual and emotional experience.
The larger-than-life big suit he wears during the concert is another highlight. Byrne’s oversized gray suit adds a surreal, cartoonish element to his dance, amplifying the eccentric vibe of the performance.
Here’s an amazing behind the scenes footage of frontman David Byrne practicing his distinctive dance moves for the 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense.
Byrne himself has suggested that he took on a character for the show, as he recently told The Ringer, “It’s me as a character – or me as myself – being anxious and isolated in the beginning, and then gradually finding himself with this little supportive community.”
The Letkiss is a 1960s novelty dance based on the Bunny Hop from a decade earlier. In the early 1960s, Finnish musicians composed modern arrangements of folk music for the Jenkka, a Finnish schottische. But instead of dancing the schottische, people danced a modified Bunny Hop (beginning with the left foot instead of the right).
This new genre of music was called letkajenkka (“line schottische”) based on the song “Letkajenkka” by Erik Lindström (first recorded by The Adventurers). In late 1963, Rauno Lehtinen composed another letkajenkka called “Letkis.” While in Finnish, this name is simply a diminutive form of “letkajenkka”, the English speaking world interpreted this as “Let’s Kiss.” This inadvertently suggestive title made this otherwise obscure genre of music popular around the world, along with the modified Bunny Hop that was danced to it.
The steps of Letkajenkka are like the steps of Bunny Hop, a novelty dance from the 1950s. It has been proposed that exchange students returning from the United States to Finland would have imported the steps of the Bunny Hop to Finland, as they had seen them on the TV show Bandstand. Whereas the Bunny Hop starts with a right foot lead, the Letkajenkka / letkajenkka transformed into a dance based on the same step, but starting with a left leg lead. This can be seen from the early recordings for TV and in some movies made during the hottest craze. Also many translated lyrics include advice on the steps: “left kick, left kick, right kick, right kick, forward jump, backward jump, hop, hop, hop.”
Steps:
The people participating in the dance form a Conga-like line (that can also be a circle) so that everyone holds the person in front of themselves by the shoulders or the waist. The steps go as follows (everybody does the same thing):
1. kick to the left with the left foot & step back into the middle,
2. kick to the left with the left foot & step back into the middle,
3. kick to the right with the right foot & step back into the middle,
4. kick to the right with the right foot & step back into the middle,
5. jump forwards with both feet together (for only a few inches),
6. jump backwards with both feet,
7. jump forwards three times with both feet,
(repeat).
1–4 may be enhanced by bouncing with the leg opposite to the kicking side.
It’s a rare thing to catch a band before they were famous – especially when the band is Nirvana and they’re still at the “playing at their parents house” phase of their career.
In 1988, Nirvana, then still an emerging band, often rehearsed at Krist Novoselic’s mother’s house in Aberdeen, Washington. Krist’s mom was known for being supportive of the band, and this early practice space was integral to their development.
The footage was filmed by Novoselic’s younger brother Robert, and features original drummer Chad Channing, not Dave Grohl.
The trio at the time—Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Chad Channing—used the space to craft their early sound, blending punk with heavier, sludgier tones. Rehearsing in Krist’s mom’s house meant experimenting with volume, raw energy, and ideas that later would define the grunge movement. This setup was informal and gritty, emblematic of their early years when they were just honing their craft without knowing they’d soon be at the center of a cultural revolution.
Toast Water? Really? Or more accurately ‘Toast-and-Water’, as Isabella Beeton put it. Like coddled egg, it’s one of those slightly fragile Victorian recipes intended, presumably, for invalids and back in the dark days of Queen Victoria’s reign, there were plenty of those, including, ultimately poor old Mrs. Beeton herself.
(From Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861)
To MAKE TOAST-AND-WATER
Ingredients: A slice of bread, 1 quart of boiling water.
Mode: Cut a slice from a stale loaf (a piece of hard crust is better than anything else for the purpose), toast it of a nice brown on every side, but do not allow it to burn or blacken. Put it into a jug, pour the boiling water over it, cover it closely and let it remain until cold. When strained, it will be ready for use. Toast-and-water should always be made a short time before it is required, to enable it to get cold: if drunk in a tepid or lukewarm state, it is an exceedingly disagreeable beverage. If, as is sometimes the case, this drink is wanted in a hurry, put the toasted bread into a jug, and only just cover it with the boiling water; when this is cool, cold water may be added in proportion required- the toast-and-water strained; it will then be ready for use, and is more expeditiously prepared than by the above method.
Isabella Beeton in 1860
Isabella Mary Beeton (1836–1865), known as Mrs Beeton, was an English journalist, editor and writer. Her name is particularly associated with her first book, the 1861 work Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. She was born in London and, after schooling in Islington, north London, and Heidelberg, Germany, she married Samuel Orchart Beeton, an ambitious publisher and magazine editor.
In 1857, less than a year after the wedding, Beeton began writing for one of her husband’s publications, The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. She translated French fiction and wrote the cookery column, though all the recipes were plagiarized from other works or sent in by the magazine’s readers. In 1859 the Beetons launched a series of 48-page monthly supplements to The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine; the 24 instalments were published in one volume as Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management in October 1861, which sold 60,000 copies in the first year. Beeton was working on an abridged version of her book, which was to be titled The Dictionary of Every-Day Cookery, when she died of puerperal fever in February 1865 at the age of 28. She gave birth to four children, two of whom died in infancy, and had several miscarriages. Two of her biographers, Nancy Spain and Kathryn Hughes, posit the theory that Samuel had unknowingly contracted syphilis in a premarital liaison with a prostitute, and had unwittingly passed the disease on to his wife.
Title page of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, published in 1861
The Book of Household Management has been edited, revised and enlarged several times since Beeton’s death and is still in print as at 2016. Food writers have stated that the subsequent editions of the work were far removed from and inferior to the original version. Several cookery writers, including Elizabeth David and Clarissa Dickson Wright, have criticized Beeton’s work, particularly her use of other people’s recipes. Others, such as the food writer Bee Wilson, consider the censure overstated, and that Beeton and her work should be thought extraordinary and admirable. Her name has become associated with knowledge and authority on Victorian cooking and home management, and the Oxford English Dictionary states that by 1891 the term Mrs Beeton had become used as a generic name for a domestic authority. She is also considered a strong influence in the building or shaping of a middle-class identity of the Victorian era.
Pop culture, capitalism, and entertainment in the 1990s created unanticipated and strange fellow travelers. In this clip of outtakes from Saturday Night Live, NBA star Charles Barkley is standing with members of Nirvana – Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic – while practicing the announcement for the 1993 season premiere.
“Hi, I’m Charles Barkley, host of the season premiere of Saturday Night Live with Nirvana. Look mom! Your favorite, Nirvana.”
With the SNL dressing rooms virtually on top of each other, Charles kept the door open to allow his friends and family to come in and out. In doing so, he started to feel for himself how the musical guests were spending their downtime three feet across the hall from him.
“Every time those guys from Nirvana opened up their door, I got like a contact high,” Charles recalled. “It was like one of those big mushroom clouds came. I was scared to go to the airport … ‘Do not go to the airport!’”
“Whether the smoke from the ganja had anything to do with the stacks of food the production assistants brought him on set was unclear,” said David Mandel, an SNL writer at the time. “What was more obvious was that Charles was not going to step onstage in front of a live audience on an empty stomach.”
“God bless him,” Mandel said. “He ate a lot.”
Nirvana appeared on Saturday Night Live as the musical guests twice, once on January 11, 1992 in which they played “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Territorial Pissings.” That episode was hosted by Rob Morrow. The second time was on September 25, 1993, which is the Season 19 premiere, in which they played “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Rape Me.”
That episode was hosted by Charles Barkley. For the second performance, Pat Smear also played with them as the second guitarist. Smear was not an official member of Nirvana, but he was included in their picture for the show.
The band was formed in 1987 and released three studio albums before their dissolution in April 1994 following Cobain’s suicide. Grohl would later form the band Foo Fighters, who have made numerous appearances on the show themselves.
Here’s the strangest cartoon with an automotive theme you’ll ever see. From the delightfully demented mind of comedian Charley Bowers comes the 1930 stop-action classic, It’s a Bird. Ever see a bird devour an entire Model T Ford? Watch this.
Charles Bowers is virtually forgotten today except among silent film buffs, but in the 1920s he was a well-known cartoonist, comedian, movie maker, and actor. Though only some of his films are known to survive, they all demonstrate a flair for slapstick and the surreal, produced using a novel stop-action technique he called the Bowers Process. He eventually made a couple of talking pictures, including this 1930 comedy short, It’s a Bird.
And a very strange bird it is. In this story, Bowers travels to deepest Africa on the trail of a rare metal-eating bird. As Bowers watches, the bird gobbles up a trombone, and then even more incredibly, a Model T Ford one piece at a time. When the meal is completed, the bird then lays an egg, which hatches into a brand new Model T roadster. “We’ll start a flivver factory,” Bowers exclaims, “and hatch five million cars a year!” But alas, the bird lays but one egg every hundred years. It seems Bowers was fascinated with the Model T’s high-volume production. The subject is also given his wildly imaginative treatment in another Bowers film, Egged On.
Karateci Kız (Karate Girl in English) is a 1973 Turkish martial arts film. Directed by Orhan Aksoy, the cast includes Filiz Akın and Ediz Hun.
The film has a famous scene that features the main character Zeynep (played by Akın) fatally shooting antagonist Ferruh (played by Bülent Kayabaş) multiple times as he lets out several drawn-out screams before dying. The scene is notorious for its exaggerated and melodramatic acting, with Kayabaş’s character screaming and convulsing in an overly dramatic fashion for an extended period. The scene also has been dubbed “the worst movie death scene ever.”
The film itself is a low-budget Turkish action movie, part of the Yeşilçam era of Turkish cinema, known for its unique style and often unintentionally campy aesthetic.
The Belt Racer was a popular toy from the 1980s produced by Kusan, a company known for its innovative and unique toys. The Belt Racer featured a plastic car that was attached to a looped belt, powered by a motor inside a handheld control unit. As the belt moved, the car would race around in a continuous loop, giving the impression of high-speed racing.
It was a simple but entertaining toy that captured the imagination of many children during that era. The design was quite distinctive, with the belt system being the main attraction, allowing kids to control the speed and movement of the car with a trigger mechanism.
The toy is considered a collectible item today, especially among enthusiasts of vintage toys from the 1980s.
The House of the Devil (French: Le Manoir du diable), released in the United States as The Haunted Castle and in the United Kingdom as The Devil’s Castle, is an 1896 French silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès.
The film, which depicts a brief pantomimed sketch in the style of a theatrical comic fantasy, tells the story of an encounter with the Devil and various attendant phantoms. It is intended to evoke amusement and wonder from its audiences, rather than fear. However, because of its themes and characters, the film has been considered to technically be the first horror film. Such a classification can also be attributed to the film’s depiction of a human transforming into a bat, a plot element which has led some observers to label the work the first vampire film. The film is also innovative in length; its running time of over three minutes was ambitious for its era.
The Haunted Castle was filmed outdoors in the garden of Méliès’s property in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, with painted scenery.
In Méliès’s era, film actors performed anonymously and no credits were provided. However, it is known that Jehanne d’Alcy, a successful stage actress who appeared in many of Méliès’s films and became his mistress and later his second wife, plays the woman who comes out of the cauldron. The film historian Georges Sadoul hypothesized that the Devil in the film was played by Jules-Eugène Legris, a magician who performed at Méliès’s Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris and who later made an appearance in Méliès’s famous 1902 film A Trip to the Moon.
The film was released by Méliès’s studio, commonly known as the Star Film Company, and numbered 78–80 in its catalogues at the Theater Robert-Houdin. It remains unknown whether the film was released at the end of the year 1896 or at the beginning of 1897. The only known copy was bought at a junk shop in the 1930s-40s in Christchurch, New Zealand but not recognized until 1985.
April 1970, an 11-year-old Prince can be seen, filmed commentating on the educator strike. This video was recorded in Minnesota.
In the video, Prince is being interviewed as teachers protest in the background. When asked if he’s in favor of the protest, Prince responds affirmatively, saying “I think they should get a better education too cause, um, and I think they should get some more money cause they work, they be working extra hours for us and all that stuff.”
The rare film footage of a Minneapolis Public School educators’ strike in April 1970 was initially restored to provide context for a strike in the same district in 2022. When WCCO Production Manager Matt Liddy viewed it, he was curious to see if he could find any recognizable landmarks. Instead, he found a recognizable face.
“I immediately just went out to the newsroom and started showing people and saying, ‘I’m not gonna tell you who I think this is, but who do you think this is?’” Liddy told CBS Minnesota. “And every single person [said] ‘Prince.’”
Although the singer — who grew up as Prince Nelson in Minneapolis and attended Lincoln Junior High School before becoming one of pop culture’s most legendary performers — isn’t identified by name, WCCO did their own thorough investigation into the matter by tracking down classmates, former neighbors, and diehard fans. And when they were connected with Terrance Jackson, who was also a part of Prince’s first band during his teenage years, Jackson confirmed that was his old friend.
“That is Prince! Standing right there with the hat on, right?” Jackson exclaimed. “I am like blown away. I’m totally blown away.”
