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Any French publisher that needed top tier art could look to the Gourdon brothers Michel and Alain for a solution. Above you see the work of the younger Gourdon—Alain, also known as Aslan—on a set of covers for Éditions de l’Arabesque and its series Les Nymphes. These are all from 1956 and 1957, and despite the assorted author attributions, Georges Roques—credited with five of these novels—also published as Luis Della Roca, and possibly others of these persons as well.
Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, performing his hit song “Don’t Be Cruel.” Ironically, a car accident prevented Sullivan from being present that night, and the show was guest-hosted by British actor Charles Laughton.
Star Trek, an American television series set in the twenty-third century and promoting socialist utopian ideals, premieres on NBC. The series is cancelled after three seasons without much fanfare, but in syndication becomes one of the most beloved television shows of all time.
U.S. President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office, which coincidentally happen to include all those associated with the Watergate scandal.
Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.
Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.
