On November 26, 1914 the battleship HMS Bulwark was moored in the river Medway, part of a fleet assembled in anticipation of a possible raid against London by the Imperial German fleet when, without any warning, as one witness reported, “there was a flash, a cloud of smoke, and the ship vanished.”
Each year, based on age and law and international convention, old copyrights expire and once protected works fall into the public domain. Animal Crackers, the second major motion picture to feature the Marx brothers, disappeared for nearly a quarter of a century, and parts of it were nearly forgotten for 86 years, and today it belongs to the public.