March 25, 1922

Pioneer cinematographer Freeman Owens was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marines. Owens is credited with 11,812 inventions, among them the A. C. Nielsen Rating System, a plastic lens for Kodak, and the method of adding synchronized sound to film. Owens died on December 9, 1979, at the age of eighty-nine and is buried at Bellwood Cemetery in his native Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). He was inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame in Pine Bluff on October 3, 2003, and was inducted into the Arkansas Walk of Fame in Hot Springs (Garland County) on December 6, 2003.