On This Day: September 10

On This Day September 10

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Celebrity Birthdays
Celebrity Birthdays

1929 – Golf legend Arnold Palmer (d. 2016)

1945 – Grammy-winning guitarist-singer Jose Feliciano, best known for his cover of the Doors hit “Light My Fire” and the Christmas favorite “Feliz Navidad”

1949 – Conservative TV talk show host and best-selling author Bill O’Reilly

1953 – Actress Amy Irving (“Crossing Delancey,” “The Fury,” “Carrie,” “Yentl”) 

1958 – Screenwriter-director-producer Chris Columbus (“Home Alone,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”)

1960 – Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth (“The English Patient,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Shakespeare in Love,” “Love Actually,” “A Single Man,” “The King’s Speech,” “Kingsman: The Secret Service”)

1968 – Director Guy Ritchie (“Snatch,” “swept Away,” ” RocknRolla,”  “Sherlock Holmes,” “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” “Man From U.N.C.L.E.”)

1974 – Actor Ryan Phillippe (“I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Cruel Intentions,” “54,” “Gosford Park,” “Crash,” “Flags of Our Fathers”)

History Highlights
History Highlights

1897 –  London taxi driver George Smith becomes the first person ever arrested for drunk driving after slamming his cab into a building. Smith later pleads guilty and is fined 25 shillings.

1919 – Almost a year after an armistice officially ends World War I, New York City holds a parade to welcome home General John J. Pershing, commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), and 25,000 soldiers who had served in the AEF’s 1st Division on the Western Front.

1953 – Swanson revolutionizes meal preparation when it introduces the first TV dinner. It sells for 89 cents and includes turkey, gravy, corn bread dressing, whipped sweet potatoes and peas. By the end of that year, Americans had gobbled up more than 10 million of them.

1966 – Meep! Meep! The animated “Road Runner Show,” from the creative minds at Looney Tunes, premieres on CBS Television.

1973 – Boxing great Muhammad Ali defeats Ken Norton in a heavyweight match, avenging a stunning loss to Norton six months earlier. 

1977 – The guillitine falls silent on this day. A man convicted of torture and murder becomes the last person executed by the French government using a guillitine. 

1993 – FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dr. Dana Scully pursue aliens and supernatural phenomena as “The X-Files” premieres on Fox Television, starring David Duchovny as Mulder and Gillian Anderson as Scully. 

Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones

1966 – A new folk-rock sound hits the radio from “Mack The Knife” crooner Bobby Darin, as “If I Were a Carpenter” debuts on the singles chart. 

1966 – The Supremes rule the Billboard Hot 100 with “You Can’t Hurry Love.” The single holds the top spot for two weeks.

1966 – The first of 21 hits for The Monkees enters the pop chart. It’s “Last Train to Clarksville,” which chugs its way to No. 1 two months later.

1988 – “Sweet Child O’ Mine” lands on top of the Billboard Hot 100 and remains there for two weeks, becoming the first and only No. 1 hit for Guns N’Roses.

1991 – Nirvana releases “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the first track off the “Nevermind” album. The song becomes the pioneering grunge band’s biggest hit. 

2005 – Mariah Carey wraps up 14 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the pop chart with “We Belong Together.”

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On this Day: July 24

On this Day July 24

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Celebrity Birthdays
Celebrity Birthdays

1802 – French author Alexandre Dumas (“The Three Musketeers,” “The Count of Monte Cristo”) (d. 1870)

1897 – Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart (d. 1937)

1936 – Comedian-actress Ruth Buzzi, who starred in the TV comedy-variety show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” 

1949 – Actor-comedian Michael Richards, best known as Kramer in TV sitcom “Seinfeld” 

1951 – Actress Lynda Carter, who played TV’s “Wonder Woman”

1968 – Emmy and Tony-winning actress-singer Kristin Chenoweth (“Pushing Daisies,” “The West Wing,” “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” “Wicked”) 

1969 – Hip-hop/R&B star and actress Jennifer Lopez 

1982 – Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin (“The Piano,” “X-Men,” “True Blood”)

History Highlights
History Highlights

1948 – The Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian debuts in the cartoon “Haredevil Hare.”

1950 – The 62-foot-tall Bumper 8 is the first rocket to be launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral — known then as the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.  The craft represented a marriage of the German V-2 ballistic missile and the U.S. Army Wac Corporal research rocket. 

1969 – Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean following the crew’s historic moon landing.

1978 – New York Yankees manager Billy Martin resigns in what becomes an ongoing love/hate relationship with team owner George Steinbrenner. The move comes less than 24 hours after Martin lambasted All-Star Reggie Jackson and Steinbrenner while speaking to reporters at Chicago’s O’Hare airport where the Yankees were waiting to board a flight to Kansas City. “The two men deserve each other,” Martin told reporters. “One’s a born liar, the other’s convicted.”

1980 – Actor-comedian Peter Sellers, best known for his portrayal of Inspector Clouseau in the “Pink Panther” movie series as well as his ability to play multiple roles in a single film (“Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”), dies of a heart attack at the age of 54. 

1983 – With his team trailing 4–3 in the top half of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium with two outs, the Kansas City Royals’ George Brett hits a two-run homer to give his team the lead. However, Yankees manager Billy Martin, who noticed a large amount of pine tar on Brett’s bat, requests that the umpires inspect his bat. The umpires rule that the amount on the bat exceeded the allowable amount, they nullify Brett’s home run and call him out, enabling the Yankees to win. This becomes known as the “Pine Tar Incident,” still considered among the wildest moments in baseball.

Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones

1971 – Paul Revere & the Raiders gallop to the top of the singles chart with “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian).”

1976 – “Kiss and Say Goodbye,” by The Manhattans, is the most popular single. 

1982 – Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” reaches No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains there for six weeks. It is the theme song for the movie “Rocky III,” starring Sylvester Stallone, which was released on May 28, 1982, one day before EMI Records released the single.

1993 – U2  begins a two-week run on top of the Billboard album chart with “Zooropa,” the band’s fourth No. 1. “Zooropa” goes on win to a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1994.

1993 – UB40 kicks off a seven-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with their cover of the Elvis Presley smash “(I Can’t Help) Falling in Love With You.”

1999 – The theme to the summer blockbuster “Wild, Wild West” begins one week as a No. 1 single. Will Smith, who stars in the movie, sings with background vocals by Dru Hill and Kool Moe Dee. 

2004 – Usher rules the pop chart with “Confessions Part II,” which holds at No. 1 for two weeks.

2010 – “California Gurls,” by Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg, wraps up six weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100.

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