Saturday, September 1, 2012

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS:

• Alan Dershowitz (media-savvy attorney, part of O.J. Simpson's legal defense team) (74)
• Gloria Estefan ((Cuban-American pop singer) (55)
• Barry Gibb (singer, one of the Bee Gees) (66)
• Boney James (born James Oppenheim, smooth jazz saxophonist) (51)
• Dee Dee Myers (Former White House Press Secretary) (51)
• Lily Tomlin (actress-comedienne, Nine To Five, Murphy Brown, The West Wing) (73)
• Greg Errico (drummer, Sly & the Family Stone, Santana, Life: The First Family Of Funk) (64, disputed)
• Billy Blanks (Tae Bo inventor) (57)
• Dr. Phil McGraw (author, former psychologist, host of Dr. Phil show) (62)
• Archie Bell (singer, "Tighten Up") (68)
• Scott Speedman (actor, Felicity, Barney's Version, The Strangers, Underworld movies) (37)
• Joe Trohman (guitarist, Fall Out Boy) (28)

ON THIS DAY:

• 1807, former Vice President Aaron Burr was acquitted of treason charges, after having been accused of plotting to set up an empire.
• 1838, Explorer William Clark, of the Lewis & Clark team, died at age 68.
• 1866, Hall Of Fame heavyweight boxer James J. "Gentleman Jim" Corbett, the first scientific boxer who pioneered the jab, was born. He died February 18th, 1933, at age 66.
• 1875, Novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, was born. He died March 19th, 1950, at 74.
• 1887, Emile Berliner filed for a patent for his invention of the gramophone, later called a record player. Thomas Edison refined Berliner's invention.
• 1890, Baseball's first and only triple-header was held.Boston beatPittsburgh in all three games.
• 1914, the passenger pigeon became extinct when the last surviving bird of the native American species of dove died at the Cincinnati Zoo.
• 1922 Actress Yvonne De Carlo (The Munsters' Lily Munster) is born. She dies in 2007.
• 1923, "Yes! We Have No Bananas" by Billy Jones hit Number One on the pop chart.
• 1923, Heavyweight boxing champ Rocky Marciano, who retired undefeated with a record 49 wins, was born. He died in a plane crash on August 31st, 1969, at age 45.
• 1931, Country singer Boxcar Willie, "The Singing Hobo," was born. He died April 21st, 1999, at age 67.
• 1933, Country singer Conway Twitty was born. He died June 5th, 1993, at age 59.
• 1937, Actor Ron O'Neal (Superfly, The Final Countdown) is born. He dies in 2004.
• 1939, World War II began when Nazi Germany invadedPoland.
• 1942, a federal judge upheld the wartime detention of Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals, striking down a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union.
• 1947, The movie The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, starring Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, and Boris Karloff, opens.
• 1961, TheU.S. minimum wage rises to $1.15 an hour.
• 1964, pitcher Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese player to play for an American major league team, when he pitched for the San Francisco Giants.
• 1966, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme by Simon & Garfunkel is released.
• 1967, Boz Scaggs joins the Steve Miller Band. He had previously worked with Miller six years before. Scaggs will leave the group just before their second album is released.
• 1968, Mick Jagger begins work on his first film, which is called Performance.
• 1969, Chicago Transit Authority is released. The band soon shortens their name to Chicago.
• 1969, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi deposed Libya's King Idris in a bloodless coup.
• 1972, Bobby Fisher became the first American to win the World Chess Championship, by defeating Russian Boris Spassky.
• 1973, "Billion Dollar Babies" by Alice Cooper peaks at Number 57 on the pop chart.
• 1973, The Joker by the Steve Miller Band is released.
• 1975 Kiss releases its breakthrough concert album, Alive!
• 1975, the western Gunsmoke last aired after 20 years on TV.
• 1977, J.T. by James Taylor is certified platinum.
• 1977, Radio Shack introduces its first personal computer, the TRS-80 Model I.
• 1978, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and Cyrinda Foxe are married. They later divorce.
• 1978, George Harrison and Olivia Trinidad Arias are married.
• 1978, the crime drama Columbo, starring Peter Falk, aired for the last time.
• 1979, A court orders actor Clayton Moore to stop wearing his "Lone Ranger" mask in public.
• 1979, INXS makes their live debut inSydney,Australia.
• 1979, U2 releases their first record, an EP titled U2-3, inIreland.
• 1983, all 269 people on board were killed when Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 en route from New York to Seoul, Korea, was shot down by a Soviet jet fighter after it strayed into Soviet air space over sensitive military sites.
• 1983, Paul Simonon and Joe Strummer of the Clash fire singer-guitarist Mick Jones, accusing him of "drifting apart from the original concept of the band." Jones will form Big Audio Dynamite, and the Clash soon breaks up.
• 1985 The wreckage of the RMS Titanic is found by scientists in theAtlantic.
• 1989, Adam Clayton of U2 has charges of marijuana possession dropped when aDublin judge offers him the option of donating money to a local women's center.
• 1989, Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti died of a sudden heart attack, just five months after being appointed to the job and days after banishing Pete Rose from the game for life for gambling on baseball. He was 51.
• 1990 The Cure launches a new album, titled Mixed Up, with a four-hour pirate radio show featuring unreleased recordings, interviews, news, and traffic, all done in the band's style.
• 1993 Radiohead's debut album, Pablo Honey, is certified gold.
• 1995 Pearl Jam announces they'll perform a concert on November 4th in San Jose, California, to make up for the June 24th concert in San Francisco where lead singer Eddie Vedder fell ill and Neil Young sat in for him.
• 1995, The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame And Museum is dedicated inCleveland,Ohio.
• 1997, TheU.S. minimum wage is raised to $5.15 an hour.
• 1999, Twenty-two of baseball's 68 permanent umpires found themselves jobless after quitting their positions, in their union's failed attempt to force an early start to negotiations for a new labor contract.
• 2002, Actors Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. are married.
  2004, Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott and his fiancee Kristine are married.
• 2004 Prosecutors in Los Angeles ask Courtney Love to turn over prescriptions for the painkillers that led to her arrest on felony drug charges. She claims to have them but never produces them.
• 2010 Guns N' Roses walk off the stage at the O2 Arena inDublin,Ireland just 22 minutes into their set, after fans kept waiting for well over an hour for the band start throwing water bottles at the stage. Guns comes back to play to a mostly empty venue 40 minutes later.