Walt Disney’s Laugh-O-Gram Studio featured his earliest innovations in animation

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

Disney was originally called the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio

In 1923, brothers Walt and Roy formed what would later become The Walt Disney Co. They began by continuing to produce Walt's "Alice Comedies" and a series based on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a precursor to Mickey Mouse.

Watch Walt Disney's early innovative film, 'Alice's Wonderland'

This 1923 short, "Alice's Wonderland," was the first volume in what would come to be known as the "Alice Comedies." It features a young girl who ventures into Disney's animated world—a technique that might seem quaint now but was groundbreaking in the silent film era.

Biggest moments that defined Disney

Walt Disney’s first studio went bankrupt, but he and his brother Roy started over in 1923, eventually building an entertainment empire. From "Snow White" to "The Little Mermaid," Disney shaped animation and expanded into TV, theme parks, and major acquisitions like Pixar and Marvel.

How Walt Disney's life impacted his business

Walt Disney has a legacy of ingenious innovation and undying creativity. This podcast walks listeners chronologically through the major events of his life, as reported in Neal Gabler's biography "Walt Disney: the Triumph of the American Imagination," and explains how they led to his groundbreaking work in film, storytelling, and business.

'Steamboat Willie' was the first film to feature Mickey Mouse

This short film introduced Mickey Mouse, the character who would define the Disney brand, to the world. It might be almost 100 years old, but you'll be surprised at how much humor still holds up.

'Steamboat Willie' was inspired by 'The Jazz Singer'

Walt Disney was mesmerized by Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer" and the way it used synchronized sound, which synced film with audio. He replicated that effect in “Steamboat Willie," producing the first animated film to do so.

Disneyland opened in 1955

Walt Disney teased the amusement park a year in advance through his ABC show, "Walt Disney's Disneyland." This episode was from the park's opening day, an event that necessitated a news-like live broadcast and walked viewers through the park's attractions and amenities. One in three Americans watched the broadcast, despite its numerous technical difficulties.

Steve Jobs revolutionized animated filmmaking

Steve Jobs left his mark beyond Apple with Pixar, the animated studio he acquired in 1986. In addition to pushing Pixar to focus on storytelling, Jobs led the studio to revolutionize animation via computer-generated imagery.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Walt Disney's visit to a Ford factory helped inspire the layout for Disneyland

Walt Disney visited Henry Ford's Greenfield Village and the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge manufacturing plant on a trip to the 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair. The layout of Greenfield Village inspired the different, distinctly themed sections of Disneyland in Anaheim, CA.

Thomas Edison inadvertently spurred the film industry's move to Hollywood

The inventor's patent on the motion picture camera included several stipulations that required independent movie studios to work with Edison's Motion Picture Patents Co., making the East Coast undesirable for aspiring filmmakers.

The first comic strip appeared in American newspapers in 1895

This video traces the evolution of the comic book from early newspaper strips to the Golden, Silver, and Modern Ages—highlighting milestones such as the debut of Superman in 1938 and Marvel’s humanized heroes of the 1960s and marking their rise as cultural icons.

Hear a joke from Charley Case, the first stand-up comedian

Vaudeville performer Case is believed to be the first modern stand-up. While others before him told jokes onstage, Case was the first to do it without props or costuming. This 1909 recording features one of his jokes. The content may be outdated, but the structure can still be found in stand-up sets today.

Fascinating facts about Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí wasn’t just a famous surrealist painter, he was a master of spectacle. Known for leaving restaurant sketches as payment and believing he was his late brother’s reincarnation, Dalí blurred the line between art and persona. He even collaborated with Walt Disney on an experimental short, shelved for decades before its 2003 release.

Digital re-aging and de-aging of faces in film and TV has become increasingly common

Traditional techniques for accomplishing this process were slow and labor-intensive, and often required manual frame-by-frame edits, forcing them to be reserved for "hero characters" and close-up shots. Deep learning methods used by Disney and other production companies now provide fully-automatic and production-ready methods to produce such deepfakes for entertainment purposes.

YouTube's first video was grainy video of co-founder Jawed Karim at the zoo

Some 500 hours of content are posted to YouTube every minute. The video at the beginning of that massive growing stream of content is this one—"Me at the Zoo." Uploaded in April 2005 by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, it shows him at the San Diego Zoo talking about elephants.

'American Graffiti' gave George Lucas the credibility to have 'Star Wars' produced

The idea for "Star Wars" was initially rejected by studios. It wasn't until "American Graffiti," Lucas' 1973 nostalgic comedy, became an unexpected hit that anyone was willing to produce what Lucas called his "space film."

A New York farmer established the first cheese factory and revolutionized the industry

Jesse Williams, a farmer in New York state, had a passion for cheese but didn’t have the resources to produce it at the scale he desired. So, in 1851, Jesse and his son opened the first cheese factory, sourcing milk from multiple local farms and producing 100,000 pounds of cheddar—in their first season. Soon, Williams had hundreds of factories and created the prototype for cheesemaking as we know it today.

Joseph Pulitzer created modern journalism

Long before there was cable news, there were newspapers, and Joseph Pulitzer was their king. A Hungarian immigrant, Pulitzer began his career as a reporter himself before buying a newspaper that he could shape with his editorial vision. Pulitzer's papers were bold, provocative, and visually striking, setting a new standard for newspapers nationwide as they moved into the 20th century.

He made a name with a short story about jumping frogs

Twain’s first big break came with “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” a fictitious story that appeared in a 1865 edition of the New York Saturday Press. (When it was republished elsewhere, the title was changed to “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”) That year, American poet James Russell Lowe called it “the finest piece of humorous literature yet produced in America.”

The first Cannes Lions winner

The first Cannes Lions award went to the German toothpaste brand Chlorodont for the ad “Il Circo,” a surreal short film featuring dancers, a wild animal, and a snake charmer—all constructed from Chlorodont’s product.

The colorful history of the world's first gummy bears

Hans Riegel Sr. founded Haribo in 1920, creating the world's first gummy bears in 1922. Initially working from his kitchen in Bonn, Germany, Riegel developed the Dancing Bear, which was larger and slimmer than modern gummy bears, inspired by dancing bears at European festivals. Haribo has continuously evolved, creating unique gummy products for different countries and addressing ethical concerns. Learn the history here.

Following the scandals, CBS briefly banned canned laughter

The network was looking to correct the public perception that its programming was fraudulent, so it banned laugh tracks and fake applause from its broadcasts. The policy didn’t last long; within a few years, sitcoms were regularly “sweetened” with the sound effects.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Roy Lichtenstein popularized benday dots in his famous comic-inspired paintings

American newspaper publisher Benjamin Henry Day Jr. developed the "benday" printing and photoengraving technique to produce grays and colors with fine patterns of ink of equal size and distribution. The process would become widespread in newspaper printing and define the work of Roy Lichtenstein.

How the 'Wallace & Gromit' stop-motion animators nearly ran out of clay

The makers of hit claymation films like "Chicken Run" and "Shaun the Sheep" require a highly complex, waxless recipe for the clay used to create their familiar characters. When clay producer Newplast went up for sale, the studio had to prepare to run out of its beloved material. Luckily, a suitor purchased the company, keeping the clay production alive.

Where did emoticons come from?

Carnegie Mellon professor Scott E. Fahlman says he's one of the original creators of emoticons. In the 1980s, the Carnegie Mellon computer science community was already making heavy use of online bulletin boards, and users began to run into issues of attempted humor not coming across through virtual text. The solution? Using "joke markers" to denote non-serious posts, which prompted Fahlman to propose :-) and its inverse :-(.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.