On This Day November 21 Click each item below to learn more! Celebrity Birthdays 1904 – Nobel Prize–winning novelist and short-story writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (d. 1991) 1937 – Emmy, Golden Globe and Grammy-winning actress and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital ambassador Marlo Thomas (“That Girl,” “Free to Be…You and Me”) 1944 – Actor-director Harold Ramis (“Ghostbusters,” “Stripes,” “Caddyshack,” “Groundhog Day”) (d. 2014) 1945 – Oscar-winning actress Goldie Hawn (“Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” “Cactus Flower,” “The Sugarland Express,” “Private Benjamin,” “Swing Shift”) 1965 – Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk, born Björk Guðmundsdóttir (“Birthday,” “Human Behaviour,” “Big Time Sensuality”) 1985 – Singer-songwriter and actress Carly Rae Jepsen, best known for her 2012 hit “Call Me Maybe” History Highlights 1783 – French chemistry teacher Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and military officer François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, make the first untethered hot-air balloon flight, traveling 5.5 miles over Paris in about 25 minutes. 1877 – Inventor Thomas Edison announces that he has developed a hand-cranked, tinfoil covered cylinder capable of reproducing recorded sound — a “talking machine” that comes to be known as the phonograph. It marks the first time in history that a person’s voice could be recorded and saved. 1964 – New York’s Verrazano Narrows Bridge — then the world’s longest suspension bridge — opens to traffic. The span connects Brooklyn and Staten Island high above the entrance to New York Harbor. 1980 – The second worst hotel fire in modern U.S. history breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, claiming 85 lives and injuring more than 700 people. 1980 – Millions of viewers tune in to the prime-time CBS drama “Dallas” to find out who shot J.R., ending eight months of suspense in a storyline that establishes the television cliffhanger. The show becomes the highest-rated TV episode until the “M*A*S*H” finale beats it in 1983. Musical Milestones 1968 – The Supremes and The Temptations release a collaboration: “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.” It peaks at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 behind Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” 1970 – The Partridge Family parks its tour bus on top of the pop chart for three weeks with “I Think I Love You,” which was featured in the first episode of “The Partridge Family” TV series, starring Shirley Jones and David Cassidy. 1975 – Queen releases “A Night at the Opera,” the band’s breakthrough album, which contains the hits “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “You’re My Best Friend.” 1981 – Olivia Newton-John begins a 10-week lock on the No. 1 spot on the singles chart with “Physical.” 1987 – Billy Idol’s cover of the Tommy James and the Shondell’s hit “Mony Mony” spends a week on top of the Billboard Hot 100. 1998 – “Doo Wop (That Thing),” by Lauryn Hill, begins its second and final week as a No. 1 single. 2003 – George Harrison’s first guitar, a 1956 Rosetti-276 Egmond 105 steel string guitar, sells at a London auction for $800,000. 2017 – Teen idol David Cassidy dies of liver failure at the age of 67. Cassidy was best known as Keith Partridge, the son of Shirley Partridge (played by his real-life stepmother, Shirley Jones), in the popular 1970s musical-sitcom, “The Partridge Family.” READ MORE
On This Day November 5 Click each item below to learn more! Celebrity Birthdays 1911 – American singer, cowboy and actor Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye and known as the “King of the Cowboys” (d. 1998) 1913 – Actress Vivian Leigh (“Gone With the Wind,” “A Streetcar Named Desire”) (d. 1967) 1931 – R&B singer-songwriter Ike Turner who had a string of hits with then-wife Tina Turner (d. 2007) 1940 – Golden Globe-winning actress Elke Sommer (“The Prize,” “A Shot in the Dark,” “The Art of Love,” “The Oscar,” “Boy, Did I Get the Wrong Number”) 1941 – Singer-songwriter Art Garfunkel, formerly of the Grammy-winning rock-folk duo Simon & Garfunkel 1943 – Pulitzer Prize-winning actor and playwright Sam Shepard (“Days of Heaven,” “Paris, Texas,” “The Right Stuff,” “Country,” “Steel Magnolias”) (d. 2017) 1947 – Peter Noone, born Peter Blair Denis Bernard Noone, frontman for the 1960s British pop group Herman’s Hermits 1959 – Grammy-winning rock singer-songwriter Bryan Adams (“Cuts Like a Knife,” “Summer of ’69,” “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”) 1960 – Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton (“Edward II,” “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Michael Clayton,” “Burn After Reading,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Doctor Strange”) 1963 – Oscar-winning actress Tatum O’Neal (“Paper Moon,” “The Bad News Bears,” “Nickelodeon,” “Little Darlings”) 1968 – Actor Sam Rockwell (“The Green Mile,” “Galaxy Quest” “Iron Man 2,” “Cowboys & Aliens,” “A Single Shot”) History Highlights 1912 – Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th president of the United States in a landslide victory, defeating Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. It is the only presidential election in American history in which two former presidents were defeated by another candidate. 1940 – Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt is re-elected for an unprecedented third term as president of the United States. He is re-elected again in 1944, which paves the way for ratification of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1951, limiting all future presidents to two elected terms. 1968 – Republican Richard Nixon wins the presidential election, defeating Vice President Hubert Humphrey in one of the closest political races in U.S. history. 1968 – New York Democrat Shirley Chisholm becomes the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She serves for 14 years. In 1972, she becomes the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties. 1994 – Forty-five-year-old George Foreman knocks out 26-year-old Michael Moorer to become the oldest heavyweight champion in the history of boxing. More than 12,000 spectators at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas watch Foreman dethrone Moorer, who entered the fight with a 35-0 record. 2007 – A writers strike in New York and Los Angeles interrupts the production of more than 60 television shows and results in the loss of an estimated $3 billion to the LA economy alone. The walkout, by members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), lasts more than three months. 2009 – Thirteen people are killed and more than 30 others are wounded, nearly all of them unarmed soldiers, when a U.S. Army officer goes on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in central Texas. The deadly assault, carried out by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, becomes the worst mass murder at a U.S. military installation. Musical Milestones 1956 – “The Nat King Cole Show” debuts on NBC as the first network TV series hosted by an African-American. The musical variety show, featuring some of the biggest entertainers of the day, begins as a 15-minute program and eventually expands to half an hour. Thirteen months later, NBC pulls the plug after being unable to find a national sponsor. 1960 – Country-rockabilly artist Johnny Horton, whose Grammy-winning “Battle of New Orleans” topped the singles charts for six weeks in 1959, dies in a car crash. 1966 – The Monkees rule the singles chart for a week with “Last Train to Clarksville.” The track is featured in seven episodes of “The Monkees” TV show, the most for any Monkees song. 1977 – “You Light Up My Life,” by Debby Boone, is in the midst of a 10-week domination of the pop chart. 1988 – “Kokomo,” by The Beach Boys, is No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart. The track is from the movie “Cocktail,” starring Tom Cruise. 1989 – Grammy-winning classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz dies at the age of 86. 1994 – Boyz II Men are in the midst of a 14-week conquest of the Billboard Hot 100 with “I’ll Make Love to You.” 2005 – “Gold Digger,” by Kanye West featuring Jamie Foxx, is a Billboard chart-topper, and remains there for 10 weeks. READ MORE