Mickey was actually born a little earlier than November 1928. When Walt lost the rights on his Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and most of his staff to Universal Pictures, he created a new character in secret, with the help of Ub Iwerks, who animated he first Mickey shorts in the secrecy of his office.

The very first Mickey Mouse cartoon was really Plane Crazy, which was later to be the basis for the very first Mickey Mouse comic strip, in January 1930 (more about the strips in the Notes on this site). The next cartoon was Gallopin' Gaucho, in which Mickey rescued Minnie from a proto-Pete.

Yet by the time they were done, studios were no longer interested in cartoons, their novelty having faded. With the advent of sound in 1927 (The Jazz Singer premiered on October 6, 1927) and the progress made since, Walt decided to add sound to these two cartoons, and to start work on a new one, this time with sound effects and music in mind. The result was Steamboat Willie, the world's first animated cartoon with sound; the premiere, on November 18, 1928, was a huge success, giving Disney world recognition overnight; more Mickey Mouse cartoons led to Silly Symphonies, which pioneered color cartoons and served as a laboratory to experiment new techniques of animation and photography, opening the way for the world's first animated full-lenght feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Disney brother's studio became the Walt Disney Studio, which grew into a major entertainment conglomerate.

As Disney later pointed out, "it all started with a mouse"; and this mouse is now 75 years old.

Below are links to a couple of features celebrating Mickey's 75th Anniversary, as well as links to the special features for the 100th Anniversary of Mickey's creators, Walt Disney and ub Iwerks.

        - Disney & Mickey mosaic picture (882kB); you will find the original picture on the Walt Disney's 100th Anniversary page 

        - "Sorcerer's Apprentice" mosaic picture (590 kB)

        - Steamboat Willie poster mosaic picture (1.1 MB)

        These mosaic pictures were made using AndreaMosaic. As I unfortunately did not have time to work more on them, better versions could probably be made, by adjusting the size of the tiles' source images; I will try and improve them if I find the time (such updates will be announced in The Daily War-Drum).
        The results are nevertheless very good; printing on A4 (29cm * 21.7 cm) glossy photo paper yields a very nice picture, in which you can see the tiles.

        The 4010 images used as source for the tiles are DVD screen captures from the following Mickey Mouse shorts, available on the Walt Disney Treasures sets: "Steamboat Willie" (1928), "Plane Crazy" (1928), "The Band Concert" (1935), "Mickey's Garden" (1935), "On Ice" (1935), "Mickey's Fire Brigade" (1935), "Lonesome Ghosts" (1937), "The Whalers" (1938), "Mickey's Trailer" (1938), and "Brave Little Tailor" (1938).

       - Walt Disney 100th Anniversary Special

       - Ub Iwerks 100th Anniversary Special