The time of memories | The Riviera online

Let’s retrace, together, the most important events and personalities that marked the date of January 29th.

It happened that:

1959 (64 years ago): The film “Sleeping Beauty” by Walt Disney is released in theaters. The film, which was released in Italy on December 1, 1959 and not on January 29, is based like other Disney classics on the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty by the Brothers Grimm, although it has several significant differences, such as the fact that in the Grimm fairy tale the antagonist , Maleficent, has no name and is not a witch, but an old fairy that the King and Queen forgot to invite. It is not specified what happens to her as the prince has never met her. This is because the fairy took revenge with her curse and what happens after her was no longer about her. On the contrary, in the film Maleficent she is in a constant state of apprehension, because for sixteen years the princess has been missing and she is afraid that her curse will not come true. Of very high technical quality, the film did not get a great response upon its release but was widely re-evaluated over time, coming to be considered today one of Disney’s flagship works. A remake, called Maleficent, was released in 2014. In the new adaptation, Angelina Jolie plays the witch Maleficent, while Elle Fanning plays the role of Princess Aurora.

1886 (137 years ago): born, designed by the German Benz, the first car produced in the world, i.e. a vehicle designed to be propelled by an internal combustion engine. The original cost of the vehicle in 1885 was 600 Imperial Deutschmarks, approximately US$150. The vehicle was granted German patent number 37435, which Karl Benz applied for on January 29, 1886. After developing a gasoline-powered two-stroke piston engine in 1873, Benz concentrated on developing a motor vehicle during his career as a designer and manufacturer of stationary engines and associated parts. The Benz Patent-Motorwagen was a three-wheeled automobile with a rear-mounted engine. The vehicle contained many new inventions. It was built with steel pipes and wooden panels. The steel spoked wheels and solid rubber tires were of Benz’s design. Steering was by means of a toothed rack pivoting on the front wheel. At the rear, fully elliptical springs were used along with a beam axle and chain drive on both sides. A simple belt system served as the single-speed transmission, varying torque between an open disc and a drive disc. The first Motorwagen used the 954cc Benz single-cylinder four-stroke engine with flickering coil ignition. An evaporative carburetor was controlled by a pinch valve to regulate engine power and speed. Later, Benz made other models of the Motorwagen: model number 2 had a 1.1 kW engine and model number 3 had a 1.5 kW engine, allowing the vehicle to reach a maximum speed of about 16 km/h . The chassis was improved in 1887 with the introduction of wooden wire wheels, a fuel tank, and a leather hand rim brake on the rear wheels.

Disappeared today:

2012 (11 years ago): dies, in Rome, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro Italian politician and magistrate. Born in Novara on 9 September 1918 into a Calabrian family, he was the ninth president of the Italian Republic from 1992 to 1999. He graduated in law from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan during the period of the clandestine struggle it helped imprisoned and persecuted anti-fascists and their families. He was elected deputy, without interruption, from 1946 to 1992. Following the divergences that arose in the government structure in the spring of 1987 and the consequent crisis of the second Craxi ministry, the President of the Republic Cossiga charged him with forming the Government, but as the conditions for the formation of a new coalition government, Mr Scalfaro resigned from office. Elected President of the Republic on 25 May 1992. He was sworn in before Parliament in joint session on 28 May 1992. On 2 June 1996, President Scalfaro, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the election of the Constituent Assembly, pronounced in the Chamber the celebratory speech. At the end of the seven-year term, on May 15, 1999, he was proclaimed a senator for life.