Today Is...Mickey Mouse's Birthday

Walt Disney had a pet mouse as a kid but his first cartoon was of a rabbit called Oswald which he sold to Universal who he thought stitched him up so he made up his own company and replaced Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with Mortimer Mouse who looked suspiciously identical to Oswald but with mouse ears instead of rabbit ears.
His wife said Mortimer was a sucky name so he changed it to Mickey but failed to find a distributor for the first couple of cartoons but the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie with his newly named Mickey Mouse, was released today in 1928 and hit a chord for some reason and was snort-milk-out-of-your-nose hilarious for most in those simpler times and Disney was off and running but not all his cartoons were a success and the critics seemed to hate most things he did.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs almost bankrupt him straight away (review: badly drawn) but it was a roaring success with the public and he followed it up with Pinocchio (review: superior to Snow White) and Fantasia (review: Vulgar) but both films sunk at the box-office and his company was once again facing bankruptcy.
Dumbo was the turning point and did well which was lucky because Bambi (review: the worst insult) bombed and they were back in hock again so it was lucky he was getting paid by the FBI for grassing up 'Communists agitators'.
Cinderella (review: nostalgically lovely charmer), Alice in Wonderland (review: Will drive lovers of Lewis Carroll to frenzy) and Peter Pan (review: Slaughtered Barrie's book) pulled him back to profit and then he hit upon the idea of an amusement park full of the films characters and Disneyland was born.
Such was the success that he began planning for a city fit for the future of the world to inhabit but before it got off the drawing board the chain smoking caught up with him and he died of lung cancer and was cremated two days later, not cryogenically frozen, Cremated.