1955: Opening day1 P|U>(9;P,
An aerial view of Disneyland in 1956. The entire route of the Vba}RF[b
Disneyland Railroad is clearly visible as it encircles the XN;eehB?aE
park.Disneyland Park was opened to the public on Monday, 【July 18, b1cd5
1955】. However, a special "International Press Preview" event was |93%,
held on Sunday, July 17, 1955, which was only open to invited guests 8<xy
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and the media. The Special Sunday events, including the dedication, uzsN#'7=
were televised nationwide and anchored by three of Walt Disney's cD6o8v4]]
friends from Hollywood: Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald ~^*tIIOX
Reagan. ABC broadcast the event live on its network; at the time, it 0*/~9n-Vl
was one of the largest and most complex live broadcasts ever.The event t;'.D @
did not go smoothly. The park was overcrowded as the by-invitation- yw0uF
only affair was plagued with counterfeit tickets. All major roads V2.K*CpZ7
nearby were empty. The temperature was an unusually high 101 °F (38 s@|?N+z
°C), and a plumbers' strike left many of the park's 【drinking ($TxVFNT
fountains dry】. Disney was given a choice of having working fountains 4
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or running toilets and he chose the latter. This, however, generated 'Bx7b(xqk
negative publicity since Pepsi sponsored the park's opening; enraged S}/CzQ
guests believed the inoperable fountains were a cynical way to sell ajAEGD2Zq
soda. The asphalt that had been poured just that morning was so soft Y>+D\|%Q
that ladies' high-heeled shoes sank in. Vendors ran out of food. A gas i=4bY[y
leak in Fantasyland caused Adventureland,Frontierland, and Fantasyland itU01
to close for the afternoon. Parents were throwing their children over l?q^j;{Dw
the shoulders of crowds to get them onto rides such as the King Arthur ^:#%TCJ
Carrousel 9=SZL~#CE
The park got such bad press for the event day that Walt Disney invited d<Di;5
members of the press back for a private "second day" to experience the `@&qf}`
true Disneyland, after which Walt held a party in the Disneyland Hotel LHz{*`22q
for them. Walt and his 1955 executives forever referred to the day as ?r+tU
【"Black Sunday"】. Every year on July 17, cast members wear pin y
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badges stating how many years it has been since July 17, 1955. For f`%k@\
example, in 2004 they wore the slogan "The magic began 49 years ago 0-9&d(L1g
today."But for the first twelve to fifteen years, Disney did
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officially state that opening day was on July 18, including in the :9
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park's own publications. Disneyland referred to July 17, 1955, as gLH(Wr~(a
"Dedication Day" in one of its July, 1967, press releases. On Monday G\ofg
July 18, crowds started to gather in line as early as 2 a.m., and the r\]WDX!`
first person to buy a ticket and enter the park was David MacPherson u{ng\d*KE}
with 【admission ticket】 number 2, as Roy O. Disney arranged to pre- F
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purchase ticket number 1. Walt Disney had an official photo taken with mf3 G$=[
two children instead, Christine Vess Watkins (age 5 in 1955) and Cur)|
Michael Schwartner (age 7 in 1955), and the photo of the two carries a .28*vkH%C=
deceptive caption along the lines of "Walt Disney with the first two. Eq?o/'e
guests of Disneyland." Vess Watkins and Schwartner both received pmS=$z;I
【lifetime passes】 to Disneyland that day, and MacPherson was awarded ;i]c
my
one shortly thereafter, which was later expanded to every single EPI*~=Z.U
Disney-owned park in the world. 09"~<W8
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A Harvard Extension School class at Boylston Hall. Through the 1950s, QZ6M,\
most Extension courses cost $5 each (slightly more than two bushels of !cpBX>{w
wheat). Now any Harvard staff member can take a graduate-level course ^Z!W3q Q
for $40 a semester, making it possible to earn a master’s degree for W+#?3s[FV
$400. It was 1835, and John Lowell Jr., the wealthy young scion of a pv T!6+
prominent Boston family, sat by the Nile River in Luxor, a cradle of 34U~7P
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Egyptian civilization. Sick with fever, he drafted a long revision to C@[:}ZGMV
his will and mailed it home to a cousin. Months later, Lowell was /b
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dead.That revamped will included a bequest that has rippled ever wider *0U(nCT&m
across almost two centuries. Most notably, it led to creation of the qgDBu\
Harvard Extension School, which is celebrating its centennial year, YGHWO#!G
p
with the official anniversary in February.8 ]+ Lowell’s idea was <.<Nw6
simple, but brilliant. Everyday people wanted to learn, he thought, E,r PM
and just needed a forum that allowed them to do so. In the 19th LP\ Qwj{
century, that method mostly involved public lectures. In the 20th 2::T, Z
century, it was usually classroom study, and in the 21st, the trend is BoXCc"q[
toward 【distance learning on the Web】. But what has been true of the "mOoGy,(
Extension School from its earliest incarnation is its devotion to -or9!:8
public learning, and its students’ fierce desire to be t.w?OyO
taught.Evolving far beyond its origins as a lecture series, the ^R\blJQ<^
Extension School is now a degree-granting institution with 14,000 &M2x`
students that this year is offering close to 【700】undergraduate and QdRMp
n}q
graduate courses across 65 fields, taught by faculty from nine of ?{[H+hzz0
Harvard’s 10 Schools. The modern Extension School has embraced video 6Q`ce!
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learning and podcasts. One hundred and fifty courses are available 4
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online, expanding the School’s reach to students in 122 countries. t
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About 20 percent of its students take courses exclusively online.! k ^TjFR*S'E
! t+ V9Increasingly, said Michael Shinagel, the Extension School’s T>z@;5C
longtime dean, “the lectern is electronic.” Yet it was the forward- 5 909O
thinking Lowell, born in 1799 near the dawn of the American republic, t_N
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who launched this thriving Harvard institution. Half of his wealth — A(uN=r@O
the princely sum, in those days, of $250,000 — in 1839 established .UDZW*
the Lowell Institute, the Extension’s precursor. His bequest is a (t
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trust, active to this day, charged with offering public lectures in ~\^8
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Boston on the arts, sciences, and natural history, to students Uag1vW,c
regardless of gender, race, or age. The first Lowell lecture, on KIS.4nt#d"
geology, was held in 1840, in an era of rising working-class clamor ZO`d
for education. The public’s response was tumultuous, with tickets i||YD-hkK
being distributed amidst near-mob scenes. The institute’s collegiate k"U4E
J{
“courses” — which were lecture series on a single topic — {L0w&~$Fy
sometimes drew 10,000 applicants.By 1898, more than 4,400 free }_;nln?t(
lectures and courses had been offered through the Lowell Institute. XC$~!
Around that time, Boston schoolteachers were looking for ways to earn V~wmGp.e
a bachelor’s degree at night. The Lowell lectures and the lobbying ZQ:Y5ph
teachers created a perfect storm of sorts, and by 【1910】 University KV6S-
Extension at Harvard was founded.Another visionary with the Lowell ^>"?!lv
surname created the modern school. Harvard-educated government scholar H0HYb\TX ?
A. Lawrence Lowell became trustee of the institute in 1900, and by E%'DIs
1906 was promoting “systematic courses on subjects of liberal <uvshZv
education,” as he called them, taught by Harvard faculty.His vision .jKO 6f
of transforming a lecture program into a school of public education rQqtejcfx
gained traction in 1909 when he was named president of Harvard. His 8a h]D
first step in office was not the curricular reform for which he later <ZiO[dEV
became famous. (Among other things, Lowell invented the idea of )t4C*+9<U
“concentrations.”) Instead, he 【pressed to create a University \5Jv;gc\\
Extension】.His desire, according to Shinagel, who has written a new %F~
dmA#:
history of the School called “The Gates Unbarred,” was “to carry twn@~$
out more completely the idea of John Lowell Jr.” 9Dl \S F[
John Grisham was born on February 2, 1955, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in QKO(8D 6+
the USA. His father was a construction worker and moved his family all j;3o9!.s:
around the southern states of America, stopping wherever he could find F)@<ZE
work. Eventually they settled in Mississippi. Graduating from law fCfY.vd5
school in 1981, Grisham practiced law for nearly a decade in |`nVr>QF&
Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury <wC1+/]
litigation (诉讼). In 1983, he was elected to the state House of -%.V0=G(Z
Representatives and served until 1990.7 i+ V% One day at the Dessoto El%(je,|
County courthouse, Grisham heard the horrifying testimony of a 12- ;W].j%]Le
year-old rape victim. He decided to write a novel exploring what would dUZ&T