On This Day March 21

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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 November 13

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Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones

1965 – The Rolling Stones enjoy their second and final week at No. 1 on the pop chart with “Get Off of My Cloud.” 

1968 – The Beatles rule the airwaves as “Hey Jude” cruises through its seventh week as a No. 1 single. The band hired a 36-piece orchestra for the recording and offered the musicians twice their usual rate to sing and clap along to the song.

1976 – “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” by Rod Stewart, begins eight weeks on the top of the Billboard Hot 100. The track, from Sir Rod’s “A Night on the Town” album, becomes his second U.S. No. 1.

1982 – Men At Work kick off a 15-week run at No. 1 on the album chart with their debut album, “Business As Usual,” which goes on to sell more than five million copies in the U.S. It contains the hits “Who Can It Be Now?” and “Down Under.”

1993 – Meat Loaf scores his first No. 1 single with “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).” The song later earns him a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo.

1999 – The Grammy-winning single “Smooth,” by Santana featuring Rob Thomas, is in the middle of a 12-week domination of the Billboard Hot 100.

2012 – The original collage by artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth that was reproduced and included in copies of The Beatles’ 1967 classic “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album sells to an unnamed bidder. It goes for around $88,000 during an auction of modern British art at Sotheby’s in London.

On this Day May 28

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On this Day May 16

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1929 – A far cry from the pageantry of today’s Oscar ceremonies, about 270 guests attend a dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel where the first Academy Awards are handed out.

1960 – Two weeks after the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at the U.S. and President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a Paris summit between the two heads of state. Khrushchev’s outburst angered Eisenhower and doomed any chances for successful talks or negotiations.

1965 – The Franco-American food company revolutionizes the way American kids eat when it introduces SpaghettiOs — canned pasta rings in tomato and cheese sauce. “The neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon…Uh-Oh! SpaghettiOs.”

1977 – A commuter helicopter accident on the roof of the Pan Am Building (now MetLife Building) in Manhattan leaves five people dead, eight others injured. Investigators blame the crash on “metal fatigue,” which caused the landing gear to fail. The helipad is never used again.

1988 – Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issues a report stating that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.

1996 – The final episode of “Murder, She Wrote,” starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher, airs on CBS, ending a successful 12-season run.

2014 – Broadcast journalist and TV personality Barbara Walters retires from ABC News and as co-host of the daytime program “The View.” The 84-year-old Walters blazed a trail for women in television news during a distinguished career spanning more than 50 years.