Frankie Valli – Time Rewind

On This Day March 22

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On This Day March 9

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Celebrity Birthdays

1934 – Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who became the world’s first man in space in 1961 (d. 1968)

1936 – Country music singer-songwriter and nightclub owner Mickey Gilley (“Urban Cowboy,” “Room Full of Roses”)

1940 – Golden Globe-winning actor Raul Julia (“Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “The Addams Family,” “Presumed Innocent,” “The Burning Season,” “Street Fighter”) (d. 1994)

1943 – American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer (d. 2008)

1960 – Actress Linda Fiorentino (“Vision Quest,” “The Last Seduction”)

1964 – Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche (“The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “The English Patient,” “Chocolat,” “Caché,” “Breaking and Entering,” “Flight of the Red Balloon”)

1979 – Golden Globe-winning actor Oscar Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis,” “A Most Violent Year,” “Show Me a Hero,” “Ex Machina,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”, “X-Men: Apocalypse”, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”)

History Highlights

1959 – The Barbie doll makes her glamorous debut at the American Toy Fair in New York, retailing for $3. Barbie was the creation of Ruth Handler — American businesswoman, inventor and co-founder of Mattel — who wanted “a doll through which [a little girl could] project herself into her dream of her future.”

1964 – The Ford Motor Company produces the first Mustang. Starting price: $2,368. An estimated 22,000 orders are placed that day – a full month before a single “pony car” even hits the showroom. More than 400,000 units sell in the first year, four times Ford‘s own estimates.

1985 – The Adopt-a-Highway program launches when the first sign is posted along State Highway 69 in Tyler, Texas. The program, in which local businesses support trash cleanup along a designated section of highway, quickly spreads across the U.S. and on to Canada, Japan and New Zealand.

1996 – Legendary cigar-chomping comedian George Burns dies at his Beverly Hills home just weeks after celebrating his 100th birthday.

2005 – “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Dan Rather delivers his last newscast, 24 years after succeeding his predecessor, Walter Cronkite.

Musical Milestones

1959 – “Venus,” by Frankie Avalon, tops the Billboard pop chart and stays there for five weeks.

1963 – The Four Seasons, featuring Frankie Valli, hold the top spot on the singles chart with “Walk Like a Man.”

1974 – One-hit wonder and Canadian native Terry Jacks basks in the glow of the No. 1 spot on the singles chart with “Seasons in the Sun.” He holds the top spot for three weeks. The original song was written in French in 1961 under the title of “Le Moribond” (“The Dying Man”) by Belgian poet-composer Jacques Brel.

1985 – REO Speedwagon begins three weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” off the “Wheels Are Turnin'” album.

1991 – Mariah Carey kicks off two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart with “Someday,” her third consecutive chart-topper.

1997 – Rapper-songwriter and actor Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace and also known as Biggie Smalls, is shot to death while stopped at a red light in Los Angeles. He is just 24.

2002 – “Ain’t It Funny,” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule, begins six weeks as a Billboard No. 1 single.

On This Day November 24

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Celebrity Birthdays

1784 – Zachary Taylor, 12th U.S. president (d. 1850)

1868 – Ragtime composer and pianist Scott Joplin (“The Maple Leaf Rag,” “The Entertainer”) (d. 1917)

1925 – Conservative author-commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. (d. 2008)

1938 – Basketball Hall of Famer Oscar “Big O” Robertson

1941 – Original Beatles drummer Pete Best

1978 – Emmy-winning actress Katherine Heigl (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Knocked Up,” “State of Affairs”)

1990 – Actress Sarah Hyland (“Private Parts,” “Modern Family,” “Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters”)

History Highlights

1859 – “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” a groundbreaking scientific work by British naturalist Charles Darwin, is published in England, and every copy sells the first day. Darwin concluded that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called “natural selection.”

1960 – Philadelphia Warrior Wilt Chamberlain snags 55 rebounds in a game against the Boston Celtics, setting an NBA record for the most rebounds in a single game.

1963 – Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shoots and kills accused JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the garage of Dallas police headquarters. The incident is captured on live television as media outlets cover Oswald’s transfer from the police station to a county jail.

1971 – A hijacker identifying himself as D.B. Cooper takes $200,000 in ransom money and parachutes from a Seattle-bound passenger jet flying through a thunderstorm at 10,000 feet. Cooper’s fate remains a mystery to this day.

1978 – David Letterman makes his first guest appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

Musical Milestones

1950 – The musical comedy “Guys and Dolls” premieres on Broadway at the 46th Street Theatre. Two years later, it spawns a film adaptation starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra.

1962 – The Four Seasons, featuring Frankie Valli, are in the second week of a five-week run as Billboard chart-toppers with “Big Girls Don’t Cry.”

1966 – The Beatles gather in a studio for the first time since wrapping up their U.S. summer concert tour and spend the entire day recording John Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

1972 – Don Kirshner’s “Rock Concert” TV show debuts, featuring Chuck Berry, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Alice Cooper.

1973 – Ringo Starr’s “Photograph” begins a week as the No. 1 single.

1979 – The Barbra Streisand-Donna Summer duet “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” kicks off two weeks as a No. 1 single.

1984 – “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” by Wham!, rules the Billboard Hot 100.

1991 – Queen frontman Freddie Mercury dies of complications from AIDS exactly one day after publicly disclosing that he is HIV positive. He was 45 years old.

1997 – Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols is the defendant in an episode of TV’s “Judge Judy.” The case is a wrongful termination suit brought on by his former drummer, which Rotten wins.

2007 – Jay-Z climbs to the top of the Billboard album chart with “American Gangster,” his 10th chart-topping album. This ties the rapper to 2nd place with Elvis Presley for the most No. 1 albums. Only The Beatles have had more, with 19.

On This Day November 17

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Celebrity Birthdays

1925 – Actor and 1950s-60s leading man Rock Hudson (“Magnificent Obsession,” “All That Heaven Allows,” “Giant,” “Pillow Talk,” “McMillan & Wife”) (d. 1985)

1938 – Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, the talent behind some of the biggest pop-folk hits of the 1970s (“If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”)

1942 – Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy and Grammy-winning director-producer Martin Scorsese (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” “Casino,” “Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator,” “The Departed,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “The Irishman”)

1944 – Golden Globe and Emmy-winning actor-director-producer Danny DeVito (“Taxi,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Ruthless People,” “Tin Men,” “Throw Momma from the Train,” “Get Shorty,” “L.A. Confidential”)

1944 – “Saturday Night Live” creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels

1960 – Drag queen, singer and actor RuPaul, born RuPaul Andre Charles

1978 – Actress Rachel McAdams (“Mean Girls,” “The Notebook,” “Wedding Crashers,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Midnight in Paris,” “The Vow,” “Spotlight,” “Doctor Strange”)

History Highlights

1869 – The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas, formally opens. The 100-mile-long waterway shortens the sea route from Europe to India by about 4,000 miles.

1962 – President John F. Kennedy and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicate Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C. region.

1968 – The Oakland Raiders score two touchdowns in nine seconds at home to defeat the New York Jets, but television viewers never see the win. With just over a minute left in the game, NBC cuts to the previously scheduled made-for-TV movie “Heidi” — based on the book about a young girl and her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. The network apologizes after being bombarded by complaints in what comes to be called “The Heidi Game.”

1973 – In the midst of the Watergate scandal that eventually destroys his presidency, President Richard Nixon tells a room full of newspaper editors, “I’m not a crook.”

2003 – Actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in as the 38th governor of California at the State Capitol in Sacramento.

2003 – Ex-soldier John Allen Muhammad is found guilty of one of a series of sniper shootings that terrorized the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area and dominated national headlines for three weeks in the fall of 2002. The shootings left 10 people dead.

Musical Milestones

1839 – Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, “Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio,” debuts in Milan.

1958 – “Tom Dooley,” by The Kingston Trio, is No. 1 on the pop chart. The single goes on to sell over three million copies and puts the band at the forefront of the pop-folk boom that continued through the 1960s.

1962 – The Four Seasons park themselves on top of the singles chart for five weeks with “Big Girls Don’t Cry.”

1970 – Elton John’s music career is in its infancy when he performs a concert to a small audience at A&R Studios in New York that is broadcast live on local radio station WABC-FM. A recording of the session is packaged as his first live album, “11-17-70” (U.S. version) and “17-11-70” (U.K. version) and released in April 1971.

1979 – The Commodores top the Billboard Hot 100 with “Still.”

1984 – “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” by Wham!, begins three weeks as a Billboard No. 1 single.

1990 – “Love Takes Time,” by Mariah Carey, is in the middle of three weeks as a Billboard chart-topper.

2001 – Mary J. Blige is queen of the pop chart with “Family Affair.”

On This Day September 15

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Celebrity Birthdays

1254 – Venetian merchant and explorer Marco Polo (d. 1324)

1890 – Mystery author and playwright Agatha Christie (d. 1976)

1907 – Actress Fay Wray, most remembered for playing the lead in the original “King Kong” movie (d. 2004)

1922 – Jackie Cooper, the first child actor to be nominated for an Oscar (“Our Gang,” “Little rascals,” “The Champ’) (d. 2011)

1946 – Oscar-winning screenwriter-director Oliver Stone (“Platoon,” “Scarface,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” “JFK,” “Natural Born Killers”)

1946 – Oscar-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones (“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Men in Black,” “The Fugitive,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Lincoln,” “Jason Bourne”)

1977 – Actor Tom Hardy (“Black Hawk Down,” “Star Trek: Nemesis,” “Inception,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Dunkirk,” “Venom”)

1984 – Prince Harry of Wales

History Highlights

1916 – The tank makes its debut as a battlefield weapon, attacking German troops as part of a British assault near Bois d’Elville, or Delville Wood, on the Western Front, during the Battle of the Somme in World War I.

1942 – Three Japanese torpedoes slam into the American aircraft carrier USS Wasp off Guadalcanal in the South Pacific during World War II. The attack claims the lives of nearly 200 of the ship’s 2,000 crewmen. The wreckage of the Wasp was discovered at the bottom of the Coral Sea in January 2019.

1954 – The iconic scene of Marilyn Monroe laughing as her skirt is blown up by the blast of air from a Manhattan subway vent is shot during the filming of “The Seven Year Itch,” directed by Billy Wilder.

1959 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States. During the next two weeks, Khrushchev’s visit dominates the headlines and provides some dramatic and humorous moments in the history of the Cold War.

1963 – Four young black girls are killed in a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that investigators determine to be a racially motivated terrorist attack. The bombing, which shocks the nation, is Birmingham’s third in 11 days following a federal order to integrate the Alabama schools.

1978 – Muhammad Ali defeats Leon Spinks to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, becoming the first fighter ever to do so.

1981 – The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice.

1982 – Gannett publishes the first edition of a new national daily newspaper called USA Today.

2008 – The venerable Wall Street brokerage firm Lehman Brothers seeks Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, becoming the largest victim of the subprime mortgage crisis that would devastate financial markets and contribute to the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Musical Milestones

1956 – Elvis Presley is king of the pop chart with “Don’t Be Cruel,” which becomes his biggest-selling single and, in 2002, is inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The B-side of the disc contains “Hound Dog,” which climbs to No. 2 a few weeks later.

1962 – “Sherry,” by The Four Seasons, is the No. 1 single and remains on top of the pop chart for five weeks.

1965 – Ford Motor Company is the first automaker to introduce factory-installed 8-track tape players in a car — the 1966 Mustang and Thunderbird — a year before 8-track equipment is available for home use.

1973 – Originally a Top-10 country hit for Tanya Tucker, Helen Reddy takes “Delta Dawn” to No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart.

1983 – Huey Lewis and the News release “Sports,” which goes on to top the Billboard album chart the following summer and spawns four Top-10 hits, including “The Heart of Rock & Roll” and “I Want a New Drug.”

1984 – Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It” begins its third and final week as a No. 1 single. The track goes on to capture Song of the Year and Record of the Year Grammys.

1990 – “Release Me,” by Wilson Phillips, claims the top spot on the singles chart and holds there for two weeks.

2001 – “I’m Real,” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule, is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

On this Day May 3

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Celebrity Birthdays

1469 – Italian philosopher and writer Niccolo Machiavelli (d. 1527)

1903 – Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe-winning singer and actor Bing Crosby (“White Christmas,” “Going My Way,” “High Society”) (d. 1977)

1906 – Oscar-winning actress Mary Astor (“Beau Brummel,” “The Great Lie,” “The Maltese Falcon”) (d. 1987)

1919 – Grammy-winning folk singer-songwriter and activist Pete Seeger (d. 2014)

1921 – Boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson (d. 1989)

1932 – Actor, film historian, television host and author Robert Osborne, best known for more than 20 years as the marquee host of the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable channel (d. 2017)

1933 – “The Godfather of Soul,” Grammy-winning singer James Brown (“Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” “I Got You (I Feel Good)” (d. 2006)

1934 – Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Frankie Valli, born Francesco Stephen Castelluccio, lead singer of The Four Seasons (“Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Sherry,” “Grease”)

1951 – Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Christopher Cross (“Sailing,” “Ride Like the Wind,” “Arthur’s Theme-Best That You Can Do”)

1975 – Actress Christina Hendricks, best known for her role as Joan Harris in the “Mad Men” TV series

1975 – Actor and tap dancer Dulé Hill (“She’s All That,” “The West Wing,” “Psych”)

History Highlights

1937 – Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” captures the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and becomes one of the best-selling novels of all time.

1948 – The “CBS Evening News” premieres as a 15-minute telecast anchored by Douglas Edwards. He is succeeded in 1962 by Walter Cronkite and the show is expanded to 30 minutes. Subsequent anchors have included Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric and Scott Pelley.

1952 – The Kentucky Derby is televised for the first time, and the winner of the 78th Run for the Roses is Hill Gail.

1971 – National Public Radio (NPR) presents its first broadcast, “All Things Considered,” hosted by Robert Conley.

1973 – Chicago’s Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) is topped out as the world’s tallest building. It loses that distinction in 1997 when the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur are completed.

1980 – Thirteen-year-old Cari Lightner of Fair Oaks, California, is killed by a drunk driver while walking to a church carnival. Her tragic death compels her mother, Candy Lightner, to found Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), a non-profit organization committed to raising awareness about driving while intoxicated (DWI) and to promote tough legislation against the crime.

1986 – Fifty-four-year-old Bill Shoemaker, riding 18/1 shot Ferdinand, becomes the oldest jockey ever to win the Kentucky Derby. The victory becomes one of Shoemaker’s 8,833 wins — a record that stands until 1999, when broken by Laffit Pincay, Jr.

Musical Milestones

1969 – The 5th Dimension own the top spot on the singles chart with “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures).” The medley was written for the 1967 musical “Hair” and goes on to win both Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group Grammy Awards in 1970.

1975 – Tony Orlando and Dawn start a three-week run at No.1 on the singles chart with “He Don’t Love You, (Like I Love You),” the group’s third chart-topper.

1976 – Paul McCartney & Wings kick off the “Wings Over America” tour at the Tarrant County Convention Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. It is McCartney’s first U.S. concert appearance since The Beatles’ farewell show at Candlestick Park in 1966.

1980 – “Call Me,” by Blondie, is midway through a six-week domination of the Billboard Hot 100. The song is from the soundtrack to “American Gigolo,” starring Richard Gere.

1980 – Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band begin a six-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart with “Against The Wind.”

1986 – Robert Palmer has a No. 1 single with “Addicted to Love.” The music video features Palmer singing in front of a band of beautiful women dressed and made up to look alike as they “play” their instruments. It becomes one of the most iconic videos of the 1980s.

1997 – “Hypnotize,” by The Notorious B.I.G., begins three weeks as a Billboard No. 1. However, the hip-hop legend isn’t alive to enjoy the success. He was killed in a Los Angeles drive-by shooting two months earlier.

2008 – “Lollipop,” by Lil Wayne featuring Static Major, negins a week at No. 1 on the singles chart.