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Walt Disney was born in Hermosa, Chicago, Illionis to Flora Call Disney(mother), and Elias Disney(father). He was one of five children.
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Moves To Kansas City, because his father is sick and can no longer work the farm land. Walt gets up at 3:30am everyday to deliver papers, to help out with family expenses.
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Walt Disney is too young to enlist in the armed service, but he alters his birth date on an application form so he can join the American Red Cross Ambulance Corps as a 17-year-old
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Walt Disney takes a job at Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio in Kansas City, MO, illustrating advertisements and catalogs, for $50 a month.
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Walt Disney's first Laugh-O-grams film reel premieres at the Newman Theatre in Kansas City, MO. The three and a half minute short (a brief movie shown before a feature film)
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Walt and Roy Disney establish the Disney Brothers Studios at an office on Kingswell Avenue in Los Angeles, with Ub Iwerks later joining the staff as an animator. Walt's role is more creative while Roy handles the business side.
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Lillian Bounds, one of the first ink and paint artists at Disney Brothers Studios, marries Walt Disney. "He just had no inhibitions," Lillian later said about Walt. "He was completely natural. He was fun."
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Seeks a way to reinvent the studio. After dozens of brainstorming sessions, they come up with a new character: a mouse named Mortimer. Eventually, they change the name to Mickey.
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The first cartoon produced using the new three-strip Technicolor process. Walt Disney will go on to win his first Academy Award® for Flowers and Trees in the new Animated Short Film category.
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The film receives a standing ovation and earns rave reviews, and the film grosses more than $8 million internationally. It`s the first full length animated film ever made.
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Walt Disney Productions goes public, issuing 155,000 shares of preferred stock and netting the company $3,875,000.
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Walt Disney holds a conference for government officials and private defense firms, and announces his willingness to aid propaganda campaigns by making animated instructional films for the Allied war effort during WWII.
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Cinderella debuts, meeting critical acclaim and grossing $7.9 million.
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Walt Disney liquidates long-held family assets, borrows against his life insurance policy, and sells the rights to his own name to Walt Disney Productions to form WED Enterprises. In an effort to fund his new idea Disneyland.
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Walt Disney Studios publicly announces the construction of a new amusement park called Disneyland. Much of the funding for the park will come from a deal with the third-place television network ABC.
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Walt Disney's television program, Disneyland premieres on ABC. Walt Disney hosts the hour-long show, which features updates on the construction of Disneyland, edited versions of animated features, and live-action films.
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He is appointed chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee for the Pageantry Committee for the Winter Olympics. Eisenhower names him to the President’s Committee on Education. The New York Museum of Modern Art dedicates an exhibit to Disney animation.
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WED Enterprises’ debuts four main exhibits. G.E.’s Carousel of Progress, the Ford Motor Company’s Magic Skyway, Pepsi-Cola’s it’s a small world, and Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln for the State of Illinois. Each of them uses robotics.
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Doctors discover walnut sized tumor. He is given between 6 months to two years to live. Is told to quit smoking. Walt Disney’s son-in-law said Disney told him, "You know, it’s one of these things. I’ve smoked all my life, and I’ve seen people who have smoked all their life and they didn’t have lung cancer. I thought it would never happen to me. And it happened."
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He wants to build an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) to establish a sustainable, self-sufficient community within the Florida theme park that will be an ideal model for a utopian future America.
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Walt Disney dies at 9:35 a.m. from a cardiac arrest. He had checked himself in to St. Joseph’s Hospital on November 30, directly across the street from his studio in Burbank.
