This week!

● It was a long time coming: Disney’s Frozen won the Golden Globe in 2014 for Best Animated feature—75 years after Walt Disney first began developing a film inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen story The Snow Queen. In fact, the names of the Frozen characters Hans, Kristof, Anna and Sven are a tribute to Andersen—say them all in a row quickly, and you’ll see!

● Hello, Dolly! opened to rave reviews on Broadway in 1964. The show, starring Carol Channing, went on to win a record-shattering 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical—and the original Broadway cast recording soon soared to the top of the Billboard album chart! Since then, a long list of Hollywood luminaries have played the role of Dolly Levi, including Pearl Bailey, Phyllis Diller, Betty Grable, Ginger Rogers, Ethel Merman, Mary Martin—and, now in the wings, Bette Midler, who is set to open in a new revival in April!

● Artist Andrew Wyeth died in 2009 in the town where he had been born 91 years earlier, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The farmhouse in his best-known painting, “Christina’s World” (now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York), became a National Historic Landmark in 2011!

● James Madison Randolph became the first child born in the White House in 1806 to Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, Martha, who was visiting her father at the time. The only child of a president to be born inside the Executive Mansion was Esther Cleveland, the second daughter of the 22nd and 24th POTUS Grover Cleveland, in 1893!

● The Shop Around the Corner, a romantic comedy starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, was released in 1940 and became an instant classic. Its enduring appeal prompted Nora Ephron to base her 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail on it— even naming the bookshop at the center of the film “The Shop Around the Corner!”