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On this Day August 29

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Celebrity Birthdays

1915 – Screen legend Ingrid Bergman, winner of three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and the Tony Award for Best Actress (“Casablanca,” “Gaslight”) (d. 1982)

1917 – Actress Isabel Sanford, best known for playing Louise “Weezy” Jefferson on the hit TV sitcom “The Jeffersons” (d. 2004)

1923 – Director-actor Richard Attenborough (“Gandhi,” “Cry Freedom,” “Chaplin”) (d. 2014)

1924 – Jazz vocalist and “Queen of the Blues” Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones (d. 1963)

1935 – Director-producer William Friedkin (“The French Connection,” “The Exorcist”)

1936 – Arizona Senator, 2008 Republican presidential candidate and Vietnam War veteran John McCain (d. 2018)

1939 – Actor Elliott Gould (“Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” “M*A*S*H,” “The Long Goodbye,” “Ocean’s Eleven” and its sequels, “Friends”)

1941 – “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” host Robin Leach (d. 2018)

1958 – Entertainment icon Michael Jackson (a.k.a. King of Pop) (d. 2009)

1959 – Actress Rebecca De Mornay (“Risky Business,” ” Runaway Train,” “The Trip to Bountiful,” “Backdraft,” “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”) 

History Highlights

1885 – German mechanical engineer Gottlieb Daimler patents the motorcycle. 

1949 – The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. 

1966 – Actress Mia Farrow quits the cast of the popular ABC drama “Peyton Place” after a two-year stint. Writers make her character, Allison MacKenzie, mysteriously disappear. 

1968 – At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vice President Hubert Humphrey wins the presidential nomination, as the most violent political convention in U.S. history wraps up. 

1982 – Swedish-born actress and three-time Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman dies of cancer in London on her 67th birthday.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina makes landfall near New Orleans as a Category 3 storm with winds of up to 120 miles per hour. It becomes the costliest natural disaster and among the five deadliest hurricanes to strike the United States. Katrina is blamed for some 1,800 deaths and property damage in excess of $108 billion.

Musical Milestones

1964 – “Oh, Pretty Woman,” by rock ‘n roll legend Roy Orbison, lands on the pop chart and climbs to the No. 1 spot a month later, becoming the Texas native’s second chart-topping single. 

1964 – “Where Did Our Love Go,” by The Supremes, holds tight for a second straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart. It is the first of five consecutive chart-topping singles for Motown’s hottest act.

1966 – Candlestick Park in San Francisco is the setting of the last Beatles concert ever. The Fab Four play before a sold-out crowd of 25,000 fans. 

1970 – Edwin Starr kicks off three weeks on top of the pop chart with “War,” a Vietnam War protest song written by Motown Records hitmakers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong.

1987 – “La Bamba,” by Los Lobos, kicks off three weeks as a No. 1 single. The track is used in the movie of the same name.

1998 – Brandy & Monica wrap up a 13-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart with “The Boy Is Mine.”

2009 – The Black Eyed Peas rule the singles chart with “I Gotta Feeling.” The track holds the top spot for 14 weeks and goes on to earn a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

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