May 25th

On this day - May 25th 1977 - The First Star Wars movie was released in theaters 

A New Hope (IV) was created by George Lucas and released by 20th century fox. The movie was first just titled Star Wars and it wasn't until 1981, after the second movie was released , that the first movie was titled "A New Hope". The movie was released on Wednesday May 24th in 32 theaters in the US. Neither Fox nor Lucas was expecting the film to become as popular as it did, and Star Wars was considered more of a B-track movie by Fox. The movie instantly broke all box office records and the release was expanded. The movie earned 461 million dollars in the US and 314 million dollars abroad. It held the record or the all time highest grossing film until E.T was released in 1982. It was named the movie of the year in Time Magazine in May 19977 and nominated to 10 academy awards and won 6 of those. It won for best score by John Williams.

December 28th

On this day - 28th December 1895 - The debut of Cinema

On this day was the first public screening of the films by the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis Jean Lumière. This was not the first screening of a film (which had been done earlier the same year), but the first public screening where admission was charged. It was not coincidental that the Lumière brothers started making films. Their father had run a photographic firm where the brothers worked as physicist and manager. After their father retired in 1892, the brothers started making the shift towards moving pictures. The original cinématographe was patented by Léon Bouly in 1892, but the brothers patented their own version in 1895. Their first footage was recorded on March 19, 1895, and it was of workers leaving the Lumière factory. This is often referer to as the first real motion picture ever made. It was on this day, 28th of December, in 1895 at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris that the brothers held their first public showing of their movies. In all, they showed ten short films including the first film "Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon" (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film was 17 meters long, that translates to approximately 50 seconds of film when hand cranked.  The brothers took their cinématographe in 1896 to Brussels, Bombay, London, Montreal, New York and Buenos Aires.

The worlds first film poster