Wednesday, February 13, 2013

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS:

• Stockard Channing (actress, Grease, played the president's wife in The West Wing) (69)
• Kim Novak (actress, Vertigo) (80)
• Mena Suvari (actress, American Pie 1 and 2, American Beauty) (34)
• Jerry Springer (trash TV talk show host) (69)
• Peter Tork (actor/musician, the Monkees) (71)
• Chuck Yeager (famous test pilot, the first person to break the sound barrier) (90)
• George Segal (actor, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Just Shoot Me) (79)
• Robbie Williams (British pop singer) (39)
• Henry Rollins (punk singer and actor, the Henry Rollins Band, Black Flag; also actor and spoken-word performer) (52)
• Peter Gabriel (rock singer, former Genesis frontman) (63)
• Prince Michael Jackson (Michael Jackson's oldest child) (16)
• Pernilla August (actress, played Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vadar's mother in the Star Wars films) (55)
• Feist (a.k.a. Leslie Feist; Canadian singer/songwriter) (37)
• Todd Harrell (bassist, 3 Doors Down) (41)
• Ryan Aiken (Survivor contestant) (34)

ON THIS DAY:

• 1866, Jesse James and his gang began their bank robbery spree, holding up a bank inLiberty,Missouri, and getting away with $15,000.
• 1920, the League Of Nations recognizedSwitzerland's perpetual neutrality.
• 1924, King Tut's tomb was opened.
• 1935, Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-murder of the infant son of Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne. Hauptmann was later executed.
• 1938 Actor Oliver Reed (The Three Musketeers, Tommy, Gladiator) is born. He dies in 1999.
• 1945, Allied forces began a massive bombing raid onDresden,Germany. More than 35,000 people were killed -- some estimates go as high as 200,000 civilians killed -- and the German artistic and cultural capital was destroyed.
• 1967, "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" by the Beatles were released.
• 1970 Black Sabbath releases its self-titled debut album.
• 1971, "I Hear You Knocking" by Dave Edmunds peaks at Number Four on the pop chart, where it stays for two weeks.
• 1971, Tumbleweed Connection by Elton John peaks at Number Five on the album chart, where it spends four weeks.
• 1976, American Dorothy Hamill won the figure skating Olympic gold medal inInnsbruck,Austria.
• 1980 Actor David Janssen (The Fugitive, The Green Berets) dies at age 48.
• 1981 Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon completes its 402nd week on the Billboard 200, becoming the longest-charting rock album in history. Originally released in March 1973, The Dark Side Of The Moon spent a total of 741 weeks (14 years, three months) on the chart.
• 1989 Frehley's Comet, the group formed by singer-guitarist Ace Frehley after he left Kiss, releases their Live + 4 home video.
• 1996 Actor Martin Balsam (Psycho, All The President's Men, All In The Family/Archie Bunker's Place, St. Elmo's Fire) dies at age 81.
• 2000, Charles Schulz's final Peanuts strip ran in Sunday newspapers, the day after the 77-year-old cartoonist died.
• 2000, Tiger Woods saw his streak of six consecutive victories come to an end as he fell short to Phil Mickelson in the Buick Invitational.
• 2001 Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante releases his third solo album, To Record Only Water For Ten Days.
• 2001 The Jimi Hendrix movie Jimi Hendrix: Experience is released on home video.
• 2001 The mayor of Warsaw, Poland, urges parents not to let their children attend a Marilyn Manson concert in the city that night.
• 2002, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani received an honorary knighthood from England's Queen Elizabeth II.
• 2003 Ex-Marilyn Manson bassist Jeordie White, formerly known as Twiggy Ramirez, joins A Perfect Circle.
• 2003 Kelly Osbourne cancels a planned performance at the NME Awards, citing fears of a terrorist attack onLondon.
• 2003 Nickelback wins the dubious prize for Worst Band at the annual NME Awards inLondon.
• 2003 Sony Music counter-sues the band Incubus, who sued the company a week earlier to extract themselves from their recording contract.
• 2004 Former Judas Priest drummer Dave Holland is sentenced to eight years in jail for attempting to rape a learning-disabled teenager.
• 2004 The White Stripes, Radiohead, Queens Of The Stone Age, and Ozzy Osbourne are among the big winners at the NME Awards, held at the Hammersmith Palais inLondon.
• 2005 At the 47th Annual Grammy Awards, U2's Bono, Velvet Revolver, Stevie Wonder, Norah Jones, Alicia Keys, Tim McGraw, and Brian Wilson are among the artists taking part in a performance of the Beatles song "Across The Universe," which is released online to benefit tsunami relief efforts, while Franz Ferdinand helps kick off the show as part of a multi-artist opening performance.
• 2008 Jack Johnson's fifth studio album, titled Sleep Through the Static, debuts at Number One on the Billboard 200 album chart, selling 375,000 copies in its first week of release.