On May 29, 1941, hundreds of Disney animators struck. Walt's three-hour speech — telling workers 'the strong shall survive and the weak must fall' — recruited more members for the union than a year of campaigning. While Roy settled the strike, Walt fled to Latin America. Disney went from 1,200 staff to under 700. Walt never had the same relationship with the company again.
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The Burbank campus is Walt's attempt to build a permanent home for his 'band of merry men.' At 51 acres, with sports fields, cafeterias, massages, art classes, and architecture designed with fins to maximize north-facing animator windows (indirect light being preferred for drawing), Ben calls it the Googleplex before the Googleplex. Walt envisions the studio being able to produce two animated features per year — a fantasy that never materializes, since each new film demands entirely new techniques and ambitions. Disney IPOs in April 1940, raising $3.5 million by selling 30% of the company as convertible preferred stock with a 6% cumulative dividend — technically a non-exchange-traded public offering. Henry Ford reportedly warns Walt: 'If you sold any of it, you should have sold all of it.' Combined with $4.5 million from Bank of America, Disney is precisely $8 million in debt — exactly equal to its total investment in the campus and the three simultaneous productions of Pinocchio, Bambi, and Fantasia. Pinocchio releases in early 1940 — straight into the European market's collapse as World War II begins — and loses over a million dollars. The cash crunch forces Disney to eliminate the proto-employee bonus system and cut wages for all but top animators, creating the resentment that will explode into a strike.
Snow White was not only the first feature-length animated film — it produced the very first movie soundtrack album ever sold to the public. Before Snow White, there was no way for audiences to take the movie home. The soundtrack gave them one. Combined with 2,183 separate merchandise SKUs, the New York Times called Snow White products 'America's path out of the Depression.'
Factories that replaced coal engines with electric ones in the early 1900s got only 6% efficiency gains. Those that redesigned their entire factory around electricity got a 3x productivity improvement. Swapping AI tools into your existing structure will give you 6%. Rebuilding around AI will give you 10x.
Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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