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On this Day June 24

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Celebrity Birthdays

1895 – World heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey, known as the “Manassa Mauler”(d. 1983)

1919 – Actor Al Molinaro, remembered for his TV sitcom roles as Al Delvecchio in “Happy Days” and Murray Greshler in “The Odd Couple” (d. 2015)

1935 – Director-actor Robert Downey, Sr. (“Putney Swope,” “Tower Heist”)

1942 – Actress Michele Lee (“How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” “Knots Landing,” “Wicked”)

1944 – Grammy-winning rock guitarist and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jeff Beck, a former member of the band The Yardbirds (d. 2023)

1947 – Actor Peter Weller (“RoboCop,” “RoboCop 2,” “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,” “Naked Lunch,” “Mighty Aphrodite,” “Longmire”)

1947 – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer and Fleetwood Mac co-founder Mick Fleetwood

1967 – Actress and former “ER” star Sherry Stringfield

History Highlights

1901 – The first major exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s artwork opens in Paris.

1947 – Pilot Kenneth Arnold reports seeing strange objects near Mount Rainier, Washington. He describes them as “saucers skipping across the water,” and so the term “flying saucers” is born.

1948 – The Soviet Union begins a blockade of Berlin. Allied forces respond with what would be known as the Berlin Airlift, flying in more than two million tons of supplies over the next year.

1953 – Jacqueline Bouvier and Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy publicly announce their engagement. They marry three months later in Newport, Rhode Island. Kennedy wins election as 35th U.S. president in 1960, and as first lady, Jackie, as she was known, makes restoration of the White House her first major project. 

1975 – Wind shear from thunderstorms is blamed for the crash of an Eastern Airlines 727 on final approach to New York’s JFK Airport that leaves 113 dead. The accident leads to the installation of low-level wind shear detectors at airports.

1993 – Yale University computer science professor David Gelernter is seriously injured while opening his mail when a padded envelope explodes in his hands. The bombing, along with 14 others since 1978 that killed three people and injured 23 others, was eventually linked to “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski.

1997 – U.S. Air Force officials release a 231-page report dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell, New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier.

Musical Milestones

1967 – “Groovin’,” by The Young Rascals, enjoys its fourth and final week as a No. 1 single.

1967 – British rock band Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” lands on the Billboard Hot 100 and climbs as high as No. 5. Meanwhile, in the U.K., it is a No. 1 hit for six weeks. The track becomes one of the anthems of 1967’s so-called “Summer of Love.”

1972 – Sammy Davis, Jr. begins a third and final week on top of the singles chart with his interpretation of “The Candy Man,” from the movie “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.”

1989 – Richard Marx scores his second No. 1 single with “Satisfied.”

1995 – Bryan Adams’ “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The track is from the Johnny Depp-Marlon Brando movie “Don Juan DeMarco.”

2000 – Enrique Iglesias kicks off three weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Be With You.”

2006 – “Hips Don’t Lie,” by Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean, begins its second and final week on top of the pop chart.

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