On This Day: November 25

On This Day November 25

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Celebrity Birthdays
Celebrity Birthdays

1835 – Philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (d. 1919)

1914 – New York Yankees Hall of Fame outfielder Joe DiMaggio (d. 1999)

1920 – Emmy-winning actor Ricardo Montalban, best known for playing Mr. Rourke on ABC’s “Fantasy Island” and Captain Kirk’s nemesis in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”) (d. 2009)

1944 – Economist-turned-presidential speechwriter-turned actor, comedian and Emmy-winning game show host Ben Stein (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Win Ben Stein’s Money”)

1947 – Emmy-winning actor John Larroquette (“Night Court,” “The John Larroquette Show,” “The West Wing,” “Boston Legal”)

1960 – Publisher and presidential son John F. Kennedy, Jr. (d. 1999)

1960 – Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Amy Grant (“Next Time I Fall,” “Baby, Baby”)

1971 – Emmy-winning actress Christina Applegate (“Married… with Children,” “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and its sequel, “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues”)

History Highlights
History Highlights

1947 – Film industry executives announce that 10 directors, producers and actors — the so-called “Hollywood Ten” — who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, will be fired or suspended.

1950 – A killer blizzard that comes to be known as “The Storm of the Century” paralyzes the eastern U.S. from western Pennsylvania and Ohio to New England and the Appalachians with heavy snow, 100-mile-per-hour winds and sub-zero temperatures. Coburn Creek, West Virginia receives the greatest snowfall: 62 inches. The storm claims more than 350 lives and becomes one of the costliest on record.

1973 – In response to the oil crisis, President Richard Nixon calls for a Sunday ban on the sale of gasoline to consumers. The proposal is part of a larger plan announced earlier in the month to achieve energy self-sufficiency in the U.S. by 1980.

1986 – The Iran-Contra scandal comes to light, as U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. An investigation determines that the diversion of those funds had no direct link to then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones

1965 – Harrods department store in London closes to the public for two hours so The Beatles can go Christmas shopping. Sadly, with Christmas still four weeks away, the Fab Four end up giving away all the gifts they bought during their spree.

1967 – “Incense and Peppermints,” by Strawberry Alarm Clock. is on top of the Billboard Hot 100.

1976 – The Band give their final performance at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The show also features Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton and other rock legends. Director Martin Scorsese films the event and releases it as a documentary called “The Last Waltz.”

1989 – Milli Vanilli start a two-week run at No. 1 on the singles chart with “Blame It On The Rain,” the duo’s third No. 1 of the year.

1992 – “The Bodyguard” opens in theaters, starring Whitney Houston in her first acting role, and Kevin Costner. The soundtrack becomes the best-selling soundtrack of all time, with many of the songs dominating the pop chart.

1995 – Whitney Houston scores her 11th No. 1 single with “Exhale (Shoop Shoop),” off the “Waiting To Exhale” movie soundtrack. The song was written and produced by Babyface.

2003 – Pop music legend Michael Jackson is arrested on suspicion of child molestation. He posts a $3 million bond and is released less than an hour later.

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On This Day: November 17

On This Day November 17

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Celebrity Birthdays
Celebrity Birthdays

1925 – Actor and 1950s-60s leading man Rock Hudson (“Magnificent Obsession,” “All That Heaven Allows,” “Giant,” “Pillow Talk,” “McMillan & Wife”) (d. 1985)

1938 – Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, the talent behind some of the biggest pop-folk hits of the 1970s (“If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”)

1942 – Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy and Grammy-winning director-producer Martin Scorsese (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” “Casino,” “Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator,” “The Departed,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “The Irishman”)

1944 – Golden Globe and Emmy-winning actor-director-producer Danny DeVito (“Taxi,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Ruthless People,” “Tin Men,” “Throw Momma from the Train,” “Get Shorty,” “L.A. Confidential”)

1944 – “Saturday Night Live” creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels

1960 – Drag queen, singer and actor RuPaul, born RuPaul Andre Charles

1978 – Actress Rachel McAdams (“Mean Girls,” “The Notebook,” “Wedding Crashers,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Midnight in Paris,” “The Vow,” “Spotlight,” “Doctor Strange”)

History Highlights
History Highlights

1869 – The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas, formally opens. The 100-mile-long waterway shortens the sea route from Europe to India by about 4,000 miles.

1962 – President John F. Kennedy and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicate Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C. region.

1968 – The Oakland Raiders score two touchdowns in nine seconds at home to defeat the New York Jets, but television viewers never see the win. With just over a minute left in the game, NBC cuts to the previously scheduled made-for-TV movie “Heidi” — based on the book about a young girl and her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. The network apologizes after being bombarded by complaints in what comes to be called “The Heidi Game.”

1973 – In the midst of the Watergate scandal that eventually destroys his presidency, President Richard Nixon tells a room full of newspaper editors, “I’m not a crook.”

2003 – Actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in as the 38th governor of California at the State Capitol in Sacramento.

2003 – Ex-soldier John Allen Muhammad is found guilty of one of a series of sniper shootings that terrorized the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area and dominated national headlines for three weeks in the fall of 2002. The shootings left 10 people dead.

Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones

1839 – Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, “Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio,” debuts in Milan.

1958 – “Tom Dooley,” by The Kingston Trio, is No. 1 on the pop chart. The single goes on to sell over three million copies and puts the band at the forefront of the pop-folk boom that continued through the 1960s.

1962 – The Four Seasons park themselves on top of the singles chart for five weeks with “Big Girls Don’t Cry.”

1970 – Elton John’s music career is in its infancy when he performs a concert to a small audience at A&R Studios in New York that is broadcast live on local radio station WABC-FM. A recording of the session is packaged as his first live album, “11-17-70” (U.S. version) and “17-11-70” (U.K. version) and released in April 1971.

1979 – The Commodores top the Billboard Hot 100 with “Still.”

1984 – “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” by Wham!, begins three weeks as a Billboard No. 1 single.

1990 – “Love Takes Time,” by Mariah Carey, is in the middle of three weeks as a Billboard chart-topper.

2001 – Mary J. Blige is queen of the pop chart with “Family Affair.”

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