Almanac of Absurdities for October 6

It's the Earl of Southampton's Birthday, Sir Henry Wriothesly was born on this day in 1573. Oddly enough, it's also Mad Hatter day. On this day in 1889, Thomas Edison showed his first Motion Picture. Although credited with the invention of the first motion picture system, the Melies Brothers of France may well have beaten him to it. Edison's desire to claim the invention as exclusively his own led him later to hire thugs to break up motion picture productions using cameras that were not of his own manufacture. Indeed a group of New York based filmmakers finally fled the East Coast to avoid the problem...and settled out in a little California town named Hollywood.