 The city that helped inspire film noir hosts a celebration of the genre. 
 Above is a very nice promotional poster for the 19th Noir City Film Festival in Los Angeles, which starts this evening at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Some of the featured films include The Accused, Lady on a Train, and Chicago Deadline, and film noir buffs will have noticed that the promo art features Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd from 1942's This Gun for Hire, which is also on the slate. In fact that one opens the festival tonight as part of a double bill with Quiet Please, Murder. Seeing the movies in the Egyptian, which opened in 1922, just adds to the authenticity of the experience. And of course film noir wouldn't be the same without Los Angeles, a city that is almost itself a character in many films. Mainly, though, we were drawn to the promo art and had to share it. It mimics the original This Gun for Hire poster, which is one of the nicer efforts from the time period and a collectible that runs upwards of $20,000 for original prints. We tried to determine who painted it and had no luck. Below we also have a couple of shots of the Egyptian, which is a place we recommend visiting if you're ever in Hollywood. You can learn more about Noir City Los Angeles at this link.  
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.
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