On This Day January 15

Click each item below to learn more!

On This Day April 6

Click each item below to learn more!

On This Day April 3

Click each item below to learn more!

History Highlights
History Highlights

1860 – The Pony Express launches, with horse and rider relay teams simultaneously leaving St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California as part of a new effort to speed up U.S. mail delivery. 

1948 – President Harry S. Truman signs the Economic Recovery Act of 1948 — later known as the Marshall Plan — which would foster the recovery of war-torn Europe. 

1968 – Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction classic, “2001: A Space Odyssey” — regularly voted as one of the greatest movies ever made, but whose philosophical meaning most fans cannot explain — opens in theaters around the U.S.

1968 – Another sci-fi classic opens at U.S. theaters. It’s “Planet of the Apes,” starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans. It’s the story about an astronaut crew that crash-lands on a planet in the distant future where intelligent talking apes rule and humans are oppressed and enslaved.

1974 – More than 140 tornadoes rip through 11 states within 16 hours. The “Super Tornado Outbreak” kills 330 people and injures more than 6,000 others.

1978 – At the 50th annual Academy Awards, Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” wins the Oscar for Best Picture, beating out George Lucas’ “Star Wars.”

1986 – IBM unveils its first laptop computer. The 5140 “Convertible” retails for $1,995 and weighs 13 pounds.

1996 –  FBI agents arrest accused Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski at his rural Montana cabin. Kaczynski was linked to 16 mail bombs that killed three people and injured 23 others during an 18-year period.

On This Day March 21

Click each item below to learn more!

History Highlights
History Highlights

1947 – With fears about communism swirling across the U.S., President Harry Truman signs Executive Order 9835. It creates a Loyalty Program to investigate federal employees to determine if they demonstrated “complete and unswerving loyalty” to the United States.

1965 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leads some 3,200 civil rights activists on a five-day march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents supervise the procession, which Alabama state police had previously blocked at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

1980 – President Jimmy Carter announces a U.S. boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

1980 – In the Season 3 finale of CBS’ hit prime time drama “Dallas,” an unseen assailant shoots bad-boy J.R. Ewing (played by Larry Hagman), who falls to the floor of his office before the scene fades to black. The episode, entitled “A House Divided,” becomes one of the most talked about season finales of all time, sparking the “Who Shot J.R.” craze. Some 160 million fans wait eight months to learn the identity of the shooter in Season 4.

1994 – Eleven-year-old Anna Paquin is stunned when actor Gene Hackman announces that she has won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “The Piano.” Paquin becomes the second youngest Oscar winner of all time.

1999 – Aviators Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones complete the first non-stop around-the-world flight in a hot air balloon, making aviation history.

On This Day March 18

Click each item below to learn more!

On This Day March 17

Click each item below to learn more!

Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones

1956 – “The Poor People of Paris,” by Les Baxter, tops the Billboard Most Played by Jockeys chart and remains there for four weeks. A week later it begins four- and six-week dominations of the Best Sellers in Stores and Top 100 charts, respectively. 

1958 – The Champs kick off five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart (precursor to the Hot 100) with “Tequila.” At the first Grammy Awards ceremony the following May, the song captures Best R&B Performance honors.

1962  – “Hey! Baby,” by Bruce Channel, is in the middle of a three-week run at No. 1 on the pop chart.

1973 – Roberta Flack begins a fourth week on top of the Billboard Hot 100 with the Grammy-winning smash “Killing Me Softly.”

1978 – New at the movies: “American Hot Wax,” a film about legendary DJ Alan Freed, who was instrumental in introducing and popularizing rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s. Freed’s career was destroyed by the payola scandal that hit the broadcasting industry in the early 1960s.

1984 – Van Halen’s “Jump” sits tight during a five-week ride atop the Billboard Hot 100.

1990 – Janet Jackson enjoys her third and final week as a Billboard chart-topper with “Escapade,” off her “Rhythm Nation 1814” album.

2001 – “Stutter,” by Joe featuring Mystikal, begins its fourth and final week as a No. 1 single. 

2007 – “This is Why I’m Hot,” by MIMS, is in its second and final week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

2012 – “We Are Young,” by Fun featuring Janelle Monáe, begins six weeks at No. 1 on the pop chart.

On This Day March 13

Click each item below to learn more!

On This Day March 11

Click each item below to learn more!

On This Day March 9

Click each item below to learn more!

On This Day February 27

Click each item below to learn more!

page 1 of 4