1955: Opening day1 v>4kF _N
An aerial view of Disneyland in 1956. The entire route of the 5S;|U&f|
Disneyland Railroad is clearly visible as it encircles the 0Rme}&$
park.Disneyland Park was opened to the public on Monday, 【July 18, r8k.I4
1955】. However, a special "International Press Preview" event was #S*@RKSE|7
held on Sunday, July 17, 1955, which was only open to invited guests >z,SN
and the media. The Special Sunday events, including the dedication, pejG%pJ
were televised nationwide and anchored by three of Walt Disney's miq"3
friends from Hollywood: Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald 1]yjhw9g
Reagan. ABC broadcast the event live on its network; at the time, it P ]prrKZe,
was one of the largest and most complex live broadcasts ever.The event AXQG
did not go smoothly. The park was overcrowded as the by-invitation- ]Uy
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only affair was plagued with counterfeit tickets. All major roads SviGLv;oR
nearby were empty. The temperature was an unusually high 101 °F (38 `akbzHOM
°C), and a plumbers' strike left many of the park's 【drinking " %,K
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fountains dry】. Disney was given a choice of having working fountains ~@v<B
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or running toilets and he chose the latter. This, however, generated MV~-']2u
negative publicity since Pepsi sponsored the park's opening; enraged z .xOT;t
guests believed the inoperable fountains were a cynical way to sell X-Q;4M-CJ
soda. The asphalt that had been poured just that morning was so soft Yw\7`
that ladies' high-heeled shoes sank in. Vendors ran out of food. A gas 5W(S~}
leak in Fantasyland caused Adventureland,Frontierland, and Fantasyland IhRYV`:
to close for the afternoon. Parents were throwing their children over V&j
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the shoulders of crowds to get them onto rides such as the King Arthur 9T#JlV
Carrousel 1l~(J:DT
The park got such bad press for the event day that Walt Disney invited 9AbSt&#
members of the press back for a private "second day" to experience the S]P80|!|
true Disneyland, after which Walt held a party in the Disneyland Hotel l$:.bwXXO
for them. Walt and his 1955 executives forever referred to the day as U'Xw'?Uj
【"Black Sunday"】. Every year on July 17, cast members wear pin x;G~c5
badges stating how many years it has been since July 17, 1955. For xD(RjL+
example, in 2004 they wore the slogan "The magic began 49 years ago JLZ[sWP='
today."But for the first twelve to fifteen years, Disney did n1Y3b~E?E
officially state that opening day was on July 18, including in the
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park's own publications. Disneyland referred to July 17, 1955, as WC?}a^
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"Dedication Day" in one of its July, 1967, press releases. On Monday "n4' \ig
July 18, crowds started to gather in line as early as 2 a.m., and the B;r o(R
first person to buy a ticket and enter the park was David MacPherson wl*"Vagb
with 【admission ticket】 number 2, as Roy O. Disney arranged to pre- [CfA\-gx<f
purchase ticket number 1. Walt Disney had an official photo taken with '+
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two children instead, Christine Vess Watkins (age 5 in 1955) and +>F #{b
Michael Schwartner (age 7 in 1955), and the photo of the two carries a iTt#%Fs)4M
deceptive caption along the lines of "Walt Disney with the first two. rRfPq
guests of Disneyland." Vess Watkins and Schwartner both received LB)sk$)
【lifetime passes】 to Disneyland that day, and MacPherson was awarded `F#<qZSR
one shortly thereafter, which was later expanded to every single 5&uS700
Disney-owned park in the world. WdA6Y
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A Harvard Extension School class at Boylston Hall. Through the 1950s, Ul<'@A8
most Extension courses cost $5 each (slightly more than two bushels of 'm;M+:l
6
wheat). Now any Harvard staff member can take a graduate-level course V!'N:je
for $40 a semester, making it possible to earn a master’s degree for .45XS>=z#
$400. It was 1835, and John Lowell Jr., the wealthy young scion of a lZ3o3"
prominent Boston family, sat by the Nile River in Luxor, a cradle of )6S
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Egyptian civilization. Sick with fever, he drafted a long revision to S+i .@N.^
his will and mailed it home to a cousin. Months later, Lowell was yrDWIU(8;6
dead.That revamped will included a bequest that has rippled ever wider zEQ<Q\"1
across almost two centuries. Most notably, it led to creation of the YzcuS/~x
Harvard Extension School, which is celebrating its centennial year, Z66b>.<8
with the official anniversary in February.8 ]+ Lowell’s idea was IZm_/
simple, but brilliant. Everyday people wanted to learn, he thought, !U,^+"l'GP
and just needed a forum that allowed them to do so. In the 19th "CEy r0h
century, that method mostly involved public lectures. In the 20th XsldbN^6
century, it was usually classroom study, and in the 21st, the trend is =A6/D
toward 【distance learning on the Web】. But what has been true of the mGQgy[gX
Extension School from its earliest incarnation is its devotion to $z7[RLu0!
public learning, and its students’ fierce desire to be
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taught.Evolving far beyond its origins as a lecture series, the iL-I#"qT,
Extension School is now a degree-granting institution with 14,000 fwy-M:
students that this year is offering close to 【700】undergraduate and /`iBv
8!
graduate courses across 65 fields, taught by faculty from nine of 7'[C+/:
Harvard’s 10 Schools. The modern Extension School has embraced video 0Fw0#eE
learning and podcasts. One hundred and fifty courses are available lN,8(n?g
online, expanding the School’s reach to students in 122 countries. %6`{KT?
About 20 percent of its students take courses exclusively online.! k U!
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! t+ V9Increasingly, said Michael Shinagel, the Extension School’s S9Fg0E+J
longtime dean, “the lectern is electronic.” Yet it was the forward- p{j
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thinking Lowell, born in 1799 near the dawn of the American republic, \TG!M]D:
who launched this thriving Harvard institution. Half of his wealth — 28[dTsd%
the princely sum, in those days, of $250,000 — in 1839 established 6 ^X$;
the Lowell Institute, the Extension’s precursor. His bequest is a /Yk2 |L
trust, active to this day, charged with offering public lectures in k]<
Boston on the arts, sciences, and natural history, to students \s2hep
regardless of gender, race, or age. The first Lowell lecture, on 9l+`O0.@
geology, was held in 1840, in an era of rising working-class clamor 0&U,WA
for education. The public’s response was tumultuous, with tickets %S8e:kc6
being distributed amidst near-mob scenes. The institute’s collegiate \#5t%t
“courses” — which were lecture series on a single topic — zCD?5*7
sometimes drew 10,000 applicants.By 1898, more than 4,400 free \5^#5_<
lectures and courses had been offered through the Lowell Institute. wVBY^TE
Around that time, Boston schoolteachers were looking for ways to earn B]< 6\Z?=
a bachelor’s degree at night. The Lowell lectures and the lobbying :X[(ymWNE
teachers created a perfect storm of sorts, and by 【1910】 University oC>QJ(o,8
Extension at Harvard was founded.Another visionary with the Lowell eL9RrSXz
surname created the modern school. Harvard-educated government scholar mt7}1s,i[
A. Lawrence Lowell became trustee of the institute in 1900, and by OpY2Z7_
1906 was promoting “systematic courses on subjects of liberal ]Ff"o7gT
education,” as he called them, taught by Harvard faculty.His vision P}o:WI4.cB
of transforming a lecture program into a school of public education R2Fh
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gained traction in 1909 when he was named president of Harvard. His ll{jE
first step in office was not the curricular reform for which he later s+>""yi
became famous. (Among other things, Lowell invented the idea of *
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“concentrations.”) Instead, he 【pressed to create a University ks7g*; 3{@
Extension】.His desire, according to Shinagel, who has written a new ;]?1i4p)
history of the School called “The Gates Unbarred,” was “to carry ^ Sx0t
out more completely the idea of John Lowell Jr.” g^(wZ$NH
John Grisham was born on February 2, 1955, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in %y33evX/B
the USA. His father was a construction worker and moved his family all *52*IRH
around the southern states of America, stopping wherever he could find o=?sM q1<
work. Eventually they settled in Mississippi. Graduating from law `CW
8Wj
school in 1981, Grisham practiced law for nearly a decade in s
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Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury _n_lO8mK
litigation (诉讼). In 1983, he was elected to the state House of
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Representatives and served until 1990.7 i+ V% One day at the Dessoto QRXsLdf$$
County courthouse, Grisham heard the horrifying testimony of a 12- `@ULG>
year-old rape victim. He decided to write a novel exploring what would K8doYN
have happened if the girl’s father had murdered her attackers. He 4)+MvKxjS
proceeded to get up every morning at 5 a.m. to work on the novel, -Ep cX!i
called A Time to Kill, which was published in 1988. Grisham’s next OwV>`BIwns
novel, The Firm, was one of the biggest hits of 1991, spending 47 oabc=N!7r
weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Grisham lives with his kVw5z3]Xg
wife and two children, dividing their time between their Victorian q=ZLSBZ
home on a 67 acre farm in Mississippi and a 204 acre plantation near
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Charlottesville, Virginia.When he’s not writing, Grisham devotes time BFt?%E/]
to charitable causes, including mission trips with his church group. jNB|98NN
As a child he dreamt of becoming a professional baseball player, and 8I$B^,N
now serves as the local Little League commissioner. He has built six EP&