In 1950, Disney released an educational short titled Donald in Mathmagic Land, a 27-minute animated featurette in which the infamous belligerent duck with a speech impediment visits a surreal world filled with geometric shapes, numbers, and puzzles. Adorable, eye-catching, and credited for making mathematics accessible to generations of children, the toon is recognized for inspiring many future scientists, mathematicians, and engineers… and apparently TV writers, as it was used as the massive inspiration for both Futurama and Ted Lasso .

Guided by a disembodied narrator (voiced by Paul Frees , a.k.a. The Ghost Host for all you Disney adults out there), Donald in Mathmagic Land was much more than just a cartoon about math. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentar

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