On this Day: August 4

Musical Milestones

1958 – Billboard magazine introduces its Hot 100 chart, a list of the 100 best-selling pop singles in the U.S. The very first No. 1 is Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool.”

1962 – Bobby Vinton’s “Roses Are Red (My Love)” wraps up four weeks as a Billboard No. 1. 

1973 – Maureen McGovern sails to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with “The Morning After,” the Academy Award-winning love theme from the cruise ship disaster movie “The Poseidon Adventure.” 

1980 – John Lennon begins recording what becomes his final album, “Double Fantasy,” at The Hit Factory in New York. On December 8, 1980, Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.

1990 – “Vision of Love,” by Mariah Carey, kicks off four weeks on top of the pop chart. 

2001 – Destiny’s Child rules the Billboard Hot 100 with “Bootylicious,” off the trio’s “Survivor” album.

History Highlights

1790 – The U.S. Congress authorizes creation of a maritime service to enforce customs laws. We know that service today as the U.S. Coast Guard.

1936 – American track and field star Jesse Owens embarrasses German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler when he captures the gold medal in the long jump at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. The win discredits Hitler’s notion of a superior Aryan “master race” in front of an international audience. 

1944 – Officers of the Nazi Gestapo (secret police) arrest eight Jews, including 15-year-old schoolgirl Anne Frank and her parents and sister, found hiding inside the secret annex of an Amsterdam warehouse. The Franks had taken shelter there two years earlier to avoid deportation to a concentration camp.

1955 – The romantic thriller “To Catch a Thief,” starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, opens in U.S. theaters.

1964 – The remains of three civil rights workers whose disappearance six weeks earlier garnered national attention are found buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

1977 – President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). 

Celebrity Birthdays

1821 – Fashion designer Louis Vuitton (d. 1892)

1901 – Legendary jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong, also known as “Satchmo” (d. 1971)

1920 – “First Lady of the Press,” White House correspondent Helen Thomas (d. 2013)

1944 – Actor, comedian and author Richard Belzer (“Homicide: Life on the Street,” “Law & Order: SVU”)

1955 – Actor-director Billy Bob Thornton (“Monster’s Ball,” “Sling Blade,” “Armageddon,” “Primary Colors,” “Bad Santa,” “The Judge”) 

1961 – 44th U.S. President Barack Obama 

1962 – Retired MLB All-Star pitcher Roger Clemens 

1968 – Actor Daniel Dae Kim (“The Jackal,” “The Adjustment Bureau,” “Lost,” “Hawaii Five-O”)

1971 – Champion NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon

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The Poseidon Adventure

Starring Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Roddy McDowall, Shelley Winters, and directed by Ronald Neame

Double Fantasy

John Lennon

Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics

Jeremy Schaap

Mississippi Burning

Starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, and directed by Alan Parker

Sling Blade

Starring Dwight YoakamJ. T. Walsh, and directed by Billy Bob Thornton

The Rocket That Fell to Earth

Jeff Pearlman

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On this Day: June 12

Musical Milestones

1965 – The Supremes set music industry records as “Back in My Arms Again” becomes their fifth consecutive No. 1 single.

1971 – “Want Ads,” by Honey Cone, tops the Billboard Hot 100.

1976 – “Silly Love Songs,” by Paul McCartney and Wings, returns to the top spot on the singles chart after being bumped for two weeks by Diana Ross’ “Love Hangover.”

1982 – More than 450,000 people pack New York’s Central Park for a nuclear disarmament rally and concert featuring Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and Gary U.S. Bonds.

1982 – The Paul McCartney-Stevie Wonder duet, “Ebony and Ivory,” is in the middle of seven weeks as a Billboard chart-topper.

1989 – The Elvis Presley Autoland Museum opens at Graceland. It features more than 30 cars that Presley owned, including his famous Pink Cadillac, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Stutz Blackhawks, a 1975 Dino Ferrari, a 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible, and the red MG Elvis drove in the movie “Blue Hawaii.”

1999 – The boy band era is in full swing as “Millennium,” by the Backstreet Boys, claims the top spot on the Billboard album chart. The Grammy-nominated album spawns four Top 40 singles: “I Want It That Way”, “Larger than Life,” “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” and “The One.”

2004 – Usher reigns over the Billboard Hot 100 with “Burn.”

History Highlights

1963 – Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is gunned down outside his Jackson, Mississippi home by a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

1978 – David Berkowitz, the so-called “Son of Sam,” is sentenced to six consecutive life prison terms for a string of murders and attacks that terrified New Yorkers for a year.

1981 – Moviegoers meet Indiana Jones for the first time as “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” opens at theaters, another Steven Spielberg box office smash and the kick-off of one of the most successful motion picture franchises of all time.

1987 – In one of his most famous Cold War speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided Germany.

Celebrity Birthdays

1924 – Former President George H. W. Bush (d. 2018)

1928 – Popular 1940s-60s entertainer Vic Damone, best known for his hits “You’re Breaking My Heart,” “My Heart Cries for You” and “On the Street Where You Live” from “My Fair Lady” (d. 2018)

1929 – Jewish Holocaust victim Anne Frank, whose diary about her family’s life in hiding from the Nazis has been read by millions around the world (d. 1945)

1930 – Actor and singer Jim Nabors, best known for playing Gomer Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show” (d. 2017)

1941 – Basketball Hall of Fame sportscaster Marv Albert

1941 – Jazz fusionist Chick Corea

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The Best Of Diana Ross & The Supremes: The Millennium Collection

Diana Ross & The Supremes

Millennium

Backstreet Boys

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Starring Harrison Ford, Karen Allen and Denholm Elliott, and directed by Steven Spielberg

Son of Sam: A Biography of David Berkowitz

Paul Brody

The Quiet Man: The Indispensable Presidency of George H.W. Bush

John H. Sununu

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

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