On This Day: January 19

On This Day January 19

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Celebrity Birthdays
Celebrity Birthdays

1807 – U.S. Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee (d. 1870)

1809 – Poet Edgar Allen Poe (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven”) (d. 1849)

1923 – Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress Jean Stapleton, best known for her role as Edith Bunker in TV’s “All in the Family” (d. 2013)

1930 – Golden Globe-winning actress Tippi Hedren (“The Birds,” “Marnie”)

1939 – Rock and Roll and Country Music Hall of Famer Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers (d. 2014)

1942 – Tony Award-winning actor and singer Michael Crawford (“Phantom of the Opera”)

1943 – Rock legend Janis Joplin (d. 1970)

1946 – Grammy-winning singer, actress and Country Music Hall of Famer Dolly Parton

1947 – Emmy-winning TV chef Paula Deen

History Highlights
History Highlights

1825 – Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kensett secure a patent for the tin can as a means of preserving food. Consequently, this is known as National Tin Can Day.

1937 – Millionaire Howard Hughes sets a transcontinental air record, flying his H-1 Racer from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey in just under 7.5 hours. Hughes breaks the record he set a year earlier by about two hours. He averaged 332 miles an hour during the 2,490-mile flight.

1955 – Dwight Eisenhower becomes the first U.S. president to allow a filmed news conference to be used on television and in movie newsreels. The 33-minute conference was cut to 28-1/2 minutes to fit TV formats. 

1983 – Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo chief of Lyons, France during the German occupation, is arrested in Bolivia for his crimes against humanity. As chief of Nazi Germany’s secret police in occupied France, Barbie (a.k.a. “The Butcher of Lyons”) sent thousands of French Jews and Resistance members to their deaths in concentration camps, while torturing, abusing, or executing many others.

Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones

1959 – The Platters serve up the hottest single on this day with “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” which holds the top spot for three weeks.

1967 – The Beatles begin recording “A Day In The Life” at Abbey Road Studios in London. According to John Lennon, the inspiration for the song came largely from Tara Browne, the heir to the Guinness fortune, who was killed in a London car crash a year earlier.

1971 – Tracks from The Beatles’ “The White Album,” including “Helter Skelter,” are played in a California courtroom to determine if any songs could have influenced Charles Manson and his followers to murder actress Sharon Tate and four others in a 1969 killing spree.

1974 – Al Wilson’s “Show And Tell” is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1980 – Pink Floyd’s concept album, “The Wall,” begins a 15-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart and goes on to sell more than 8 million copies. 

1993 – Members of Fleetwood Mac reunite to perform at U.S. President Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Ball. The band’s hit, “Don’t Stop,” had been the theme of his presidential campaign.

1994 – Elton John, John Lennon, The Band, The Grateful Dead, Duane Eddy, Willie Dixon, Bob Marley, Johnny Otis, and Rod Stewart are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York. Stewart is stranded in Los Angeles and unable to attend because of the massive earthquake that had struck two days earlier.

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On this Day: May 11

On this Day May 11

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Celebrity Birthdays
Celebrity Birthdays

1888 – Acclaimed songwriter Irving Berlin (“White Christmas, “Cheek to Cheek,” “God Bless America”), who was a major contributor to the Great American Songbook (d. 1989)

1904 – Surrealist artist Salvador Dali (d. 1989)

1911 – Actor Phil Silvers (“The Phil Silvers Show,” “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”) (d. 1985)

1927 – Comedian and political satirist Mort Sahl, considered the first modern stand-up comedian

1941 – Rock singer-songwriter Eric Burdon, former lead vocalist for the bands The Animals and War

1952 – Actress Frances Fisher (“Unforgiven,” “Titanic,” “House of Sand and Fog,” “Laws of Attraction,” “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “Resurrection”)

1959 – Former MTV VJ and Sirius XM “80s on 8” DJ Martha Quinn

1963 – Tony-winning actress Natasha Richardson (“A Month in the Country,” “Patty Hearst,” The Parent Trap,” “Maid in Manhattan”) (d. 2009)

1964 – Actor Tim Blake Nelson (“Donnie Brasco,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” “Minority Report,” “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”) 

History Highlights
History Highlights

1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is established to promote the movie industry.

1947 – The B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announces development of a tubeless tire, a technological innovation that would make automobiles safer and more efficient.

1949 – Israel becomes a member of the United Nations.

1953 – A powerful F5 tornado sweeps across downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114 people. Violent weather also causes death and destruction in Flint, Michigan and Worcester, Massachusetts.

1976 – “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” makes his final house call as the popular ABC medical drama starring Robert Young airs for the last time. The series premiered in 1969.

1987 – Klaus Barbie, the former Nazi Gestapo chief of German-occupied Lyon, France, goes on trial more than four decades after the end of World War II. The so-called “Butcher of Lyon” is charged with 177 crimes against humanity.

1997 – This is a landmark day for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigns after 19 moves in a game against Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by scientists at IBM. This was the sixth and final game of their match, which Kasparov lost two games to one, with three draws.

Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones

1959 – The instrumental “The Happy Organ,” by organist-pianist Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez, is the No. 1 single for a week and becomes a fixture at roller skating rinks across the U.S. Cortez makes one more trip to the Top-10 during his career with “Rinky Dink” in 1962.

1963 – Little Peggy March wraps up three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 with “I Will Follow Him.”

1970 – The three-disk soundtrack to the Woodstock Festival is released and goes gold within two weeks.

1972 – John Lennon makes a guest appearance on “The Dick Cavett Show” and claims the FBI is tapping his phone.

1981 – Jamaican singer-songwriter and guitarist Bob Marley, who introduced international audiences to reggae music, dies of cancer at the age of 36. Marley is posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and in 2001, receives a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

1985 – Madonna has the No. 1 single with “Crazy for You,” from the soundtrack to the movie “Vision Quest,” starring Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino. The track garners Madonna her first Grammy nomination in the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance category.

1991 – “Joyride,” by Swedish pop duo Roxette, is the No. 1 single for a week.

1996 – Mariah Carey begins her second and final week on top of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Always Be My Baby.”

2002 – Ashanti maintains her hold on the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Foolish.” The track remains a chart-topper for 10 weeks.

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