Happy 53rd Birthday to actor–producer Paul Giamatti who earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Cinderella Man.

His brilliant role as a depressed author and wine aficionado in the film Sideways (see the trailer), nearly brought down the Merlot industry in California—because his character despised the red, preferring Pinot Noir.

He’s also known for his work in The Illusionist, Straight Outta Compton, American Splendor, Too Big To Fail, Downton Abbey, 12 Years a Slave—and for playing the U.S. president in John Adams, which earned him a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and Screen Actors Guild Award. Since 2016—or maybe the coronavirus—you may know him from the TV series, Billions. WATCH his interview from lockdown and see his new drawings… (1967)

–Featured photo by Karon Liu, CC license, 2010

MORE Good News on this Day:

• The first drive-in theater opened in Camden, New Jersey, with an outdoor movie screen and a large parking area where customers viewed films from the privacy and comfort of their cars—something still being done in a couple hundred theaters in the U.S. (1933)
• The National Basketball Association (NBA) was created with 11 teams (1946)
• The first Internet connection was created when Network control protocol packets were sent from the data port of one IMP mini-computer to another—a development that the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency made to interconnect machines across the country (1969)
• The video game, Tetris, was released (1984)
• 172 nations meet at a United Nations Environmental Conference – the Earth Summit — in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the largest ever of its kind with unprecedented scope (1992)
• In Australian Rules Football, Tony Lockett broke the record for career goals, previously 1299 by Gordon Coventry, which had stood since 1937 (1999)
• Phylicia Rashad became the first African-American to win a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, for her work in “A Raisin in the Sun” (2004)

And on this day in 2006, the Brazilian government began protecting an area of Amazon rainforest even more vast than the state of California.

Partnering with Germany, the World Bank and WWF in 2002, a Brazilian conservation group established a new park system, the Juruena National Park—now the third-largest park in Brazil. The system of 80 reserves and parks now protect the vital habitat of more than 190,000 square miles. The Success has been phenomenal for one of the world’s most ambitious conservation project— the ARPA (Amazon Region Protected Area Program). Brazil has been able to reduce deforestation in Amazonia by nearly 90% in the last ten years.

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