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Related: 1900s
Broncho Billy Anderson, from "The Great Train Robbery"
Electrocuting an Elephant (1903) - Thomas Edison
This is a film taken of the execution of Topsy, an elephant employed to help build Luna Park on Coney Island. She had killed three men, including a drunken spectator who fed her a cigarette. Cyanide-laced carrots fed to her by park officials failed, and the ASPCA forbade a hanging. Thomas Edison, meanwhile, had been publicly killing dogs and cats with AC power to show that his DC power was more effective and less dangerous. Edison performed the execution of Topsy and captured it on film, though the brief short shows only the event, and not the background behind it. It makes a disturbing sight, particularly embedded in Errol Morris's _Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A Leuchter, Jr._. --Summary written by Scott Andrew Hutchins {scottandrewh@home.com} for imdb.com
Topsy, the famous "Baby" elephant, was electrocuted at Coney Island on January 4, 1903. We secured an excellent picture of the execution. The scene opens with keeper leading Topsy to the place of execution. After copper plates or electrodes were fastened to her feet, 6,600 volts of electricity were turned on. The elephant is seen to become rigid, throwing her trunk in the air, and then is completely enveloped in smoke from the burning electrodes. The current is cut off and she falls forward to the ground dead. --Summary written by Edison Catalog for imdb.com
Paul Poiret opens his own fashion house
Paul Poiret (20 April 1879, Paris, France - 30 April 1944, Paris) was a couturier (dress designer) who worked in Paris in the years before World War I. He is best known for designing the hobble skirt. He worked as a designer in the fashion house of Charles Frederick Worth in Paris before opening his own shop in 1903. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poiret [Feb 2005]
Film editing
see also: An Edited History Of Cut’n’Paste
by Neil McMillan
The Mysterious Mummy (1903) - Sax Rohmer
It was about five o'clock on a hot August afternoon, that a tall, thin man, wearing a weedy beard, and made conspicious by an ill-fitting frock-coat and an almost napless silk hat, walked into the entrance hall of the Great Portland Square Museum. He carried no stick, and, looking about him, as though unfamiliar with the building, he ultimately mounted the principal staircase, walking with a pronounced stoop, and at intervals coughing with a hollow sound. --Sax Rohmer via http://www.harvestfields.ca/horror/004/169.htm of the Dark Moon - Gothic Tales, Horror, Mystery's, Pulp collection[Jul 2005]
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