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On this Day August 23

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Celebrity Birthdays

1912 – Actor-dancer-singer Gene Kelly (d. 1996)

1929 – Actress Vera Miles, best known for her role as Lila Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”

1931 – Actress Barbara Eden, who starred in TV’s “I Dream of Jeannie” from 1965-1970

1946 – The Who drummer Keith Moon (d. 1978)

1949 – Actress Shelley Long (“Cheers,” “The Money Pit,” “The Brady Bunch Movie”) 

1949 – Singer-songwriter and actor Rick Springfield, who starred in the ABC soap opera “General Hospital” in the early 1980s and won a Grammy for his 1981 smash “Jessie’s Girl” 

1970 – Actor-comedian Jay Mohr (“Saturday Night Live,” “Jerry Maguire,” “200 Cigarettes,” “Pay It Forward,” “Scrubs,” “The Jeff Foxworthy Show”)

1970 – Actor River Phoenix (“Explorers,” “Stand By Me,” “Running On Empty”) (d. 1993)

1978 – NBA legend Kobe Bryant, who devoted his entire 20-year playing career to the Los Angeles Lakers (d. 2020)

1988 – NBA star point guard Jeremy Lin, who unexpectedly led a winning turnaround with the New York Knicks in 2012 that generated a global following known as “Linsanity”

History Highlights

1926 – Silent film idol Rudolph Valentino dies in New York at the age of 31. 

1927 – Despite worldwide demonstrations in support of their innocence, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed in Massachusetts for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. 

1966 – NASA’S Lunar Orbiter 1 captures the very first image of Earth from the moon’s orbit. The unmanned spacecraft was launched to survey the lunar surface in preparation for the Apollo 11 moon landing. 

1989 – Former Cincinnati Reds star player and manager Pete Rose is banned from baseball for life as punishment for betting on the sport.  The ban robs Rose of any future employment in Major League Baseball and, despite a stellar playing career, renders him ineligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

1999 – Health officials report an encephalitis outbreak in New York City that turns out to be the earliest cases of West Nile virus in the U.S. Seven people die.

Musical Milestones

1966  – A little over a year after their first appearance at New York’s Shea Stadium, The Beatles return for a second time, however this performance fails to draw a sell-out crowd.

1969 – The Rolling Stones kick off four weeks on top of the singles chart with “Honky Tonk Women.”

1969 – Johnny Cash begins a four-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart with “Johnny Cash At San Quentin” — the recording of a live concert for inmates of San Quentin State Prison. It is the follow-up to Cash’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful “At Folsom Prison.”

1975 – “Fallin’ in Love” by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds is the hottest single in America. 

1986 – Madonna rules the Billboard Hot 100 with “Papa Don’t Preach,” off her “True Blue” album.

1997 – The Grammy-winning “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy with Faith Evans and 112 tops the singles chart.

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