June 9: On This Day in World History … briefly
Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet and typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is most famous for his semi-intelligible speech and his mischievous and temperamental personality.
1934: Donald makes his first appearance
Mickey Mouse, the first character created by American cartoon king Walt Disney finally got some competition.
Making his debut in ‘The Wise Little Hen’, Donald Duck was Disney’s latest creation and like Mickey, Donald also had the gift of speech, but his voice was contrastingly strange and ‘quacky’.
Audiences had to strain to understand what Donald was saying. The origins of Donald Duck’s name may have been inspired by Australian cricket legend Donald Bradman. In 1932 Bradman and the Australian team were touring North America and he made the news after being dismissed for a duck against New York West Indians.
Walt Disney was in the process of creating a friend for Mickey Mouse when he possibly read about Bradman’s dismissal in the papers and decided to name the new character ‘Donald Duck’. Voice performer Clarence Nash auditioned for Walt Disney Studios when he learned that Disney was looking for people to create animal sounds for his cartoons.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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