The White House – Time Rewind

On This Day February 17

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On This Day November 13

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Celebrity Birthdays

1850 – Novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (“Treasure Island,” “Kidnapped,” “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) (d. 1894)

1934 – Actor-director-producer Garry Marshall, who created some of the most popular TV sitcoms of all time, including “The Odd Couple,” “Mork & Mindy,” “Happy Days” and “Laverne & Shirley” and hit movies like “Pretty Woman” and “The Princess Diaries” (d. 2016)

1947 – Tony-winning actor Joe Mantegna (“Three Amigos,” “The Godfather Part III,” “Forget Paris,” “Up Close & Personal,” “Criminal Minds”)

1954 – Actor Chris Noth (“Law & Order,” “Sex and the City”)

1955 – Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony-winning actress, comedian and “The View” host Whoopi Goldberg, born Caryn Elaine Johnson

1967 – Actor Steve Zahn (“Strange Wilderness,” “Suburbia,” “Happy Texas,” “Crimson Tide,” “Stuart Little,” “Hamlet,” “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” “Dr. Dolittle 2”)

1967 – Late-night TV talk show host-comedian Jimmy Kimmel, born James Christian Kimmel

History Highlights

1927 – The Holland Tunnel, linking New York City to New Jersey beneath the Hudson River, opens to traffic with each crossing costing 50 cents. Nearly 52,000 vehicles travel the tunnel on its first day.

1965 – Ninety people die in a fire aboard the cruise ship S.S. Yarmouth Castle between Miami and Nassau, The Bahamas. More than 400 others are rescued before the ship sinks.

1969 – Thousands of Vietnam War protesters stage a symbolic “March Against Death” in Washington, D.C., calling out the names of U.S. servicemen killed in combat as they pass the White House.

1974 – Chemical technician and union activist Karen Silkwood is killed in a mysterious one-car crash in Oklahoma at the age of 28. Silkwood worked at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in Crescent, Oklahoma and was critical of plant safety. The night she died, she was driving to meet with a union representative and a reporter for The New York Times, reportedly with documents proving unsafe plant conditions that led to her own exposure to radioactivity.

1982 – A week-long national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War culminates with the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The long-anticipated memorial, designed by Ohio-born architect Maya Lin, is a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of some 59,000 Americans who died in the Southeast Asia conflict.

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 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.

On this Day May 9

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Celebrity Birthdays

1874 – Archaeologist Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun (d. 1939)

1918 – Longtime CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace (d. 2012)

1936 – Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor Albert Finney (“Miller’s Crossing,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Big Fish”) (d. 2019)

1940 – Oscar and Emmy-winning director-producer James L. Brooks (“Terms of Endearment,” “The Simpsons,” “As Good as it Gets”)

1946 – Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress Candice Bergen (“Murphy Brown,” “Boston Legal,” “Miss Congeniality”)

1949 – Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Billy Joel (“Piano Man,” “Just the Way You Are,” “Movin’ Out,” “Only the Good Die Young,” “She’s Always a Woman”)

1961 – Actor-singer John Corbett (“Northern Exposure,” “Sex and the City,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”), who also provides voiceovers for Applebees and Walgreens

History Highlights

1926 – Polar explorer Richard Byrd and co-pilot Floyd Bennett fly over the North Pole in a triple-engine Fokker monoplane, marking the first time an aircraft crosses the top of the world. The flight’s earlier-than-expected return prompted some to challenge the achievement. However, a scientific committee of the National Geographic Society confirms the historic crossing, and Byrd and Bennett are awarded Medals of Honor by President Calvin Coolidge.

1960 – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the first commercially produced birth control pill, which comes to be known as “The Pill,” and paves the way for the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

1970 – A Vietnam War protest draws nearly 100,000 demonstrators to an area near the White House. Speakers include actress Jane Fonda and acclaimed pediatrician-author Dr. Benjamin Spock. President Richard Nixon meets secretly with a group of protesters at the Lincoln Memorial.

1971 – The long-running comedy “The Honeymooners,” starring Jackie Gleason as bus driver Ralph Kramden and Audrey Meadows as his wife Alice, signs off for the last time.

1974 – The House Judiciary Committee opens impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.

1978 – The bullet-riddled body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro is found in the back of a car in Rome. Moro had been kidnapped by Red Brigade terrorists two months earlier after a bloody shoot-out near his suburban home.

Musical Milestones

1964 – Louis Armstrong’s “Hello Dolly” ends The Beatles’ 14-week hold on the top spot on the singles chart which began with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and was followed by “She Loves You” and “Can’t Buy Me Love.” At age 62, Satchmo becomes the oldest artist to reach No. 1.

1966 – The Beatles hold the first of three studio sessions to record “For No One,” a track on the band’s “Revolver” album.

1970 – “American Woman,” by The Guess Who, begins a three-week run at No. 1 on the singles chart.

1987 – Cutting Crew begins its second and final week on top of the Billboard Hot 100 with “(I Just) Died in Your Arms.”

1992 – Bruce Springsteen makes his network television debut on “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) with host Tom Hanks.

1992 – “Jump,” the debut single by hip hop duo Kris Kross, is midway through an eight-week reign of the Billboard Hot 100. The artists are just 12 and 13 years old when they record the track, which becomes an international smash.

2014 – Michael Jackson’s second posthumous album, “Xscape,” is released. It contains previously unreleased tracks dating back to 1980.