Monday, February 18, 2013

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS:

• Matt Dillon (actor, The Flamingo Kid, Wild Things, The Outsiders, There's Something About Mary, Crash, Singles) (49)
• Toni Morrison (Nobel Prize-winning novelist) (82)
• Yoko Ono (widow of ex-Beatle John Lennon) (80)
• Dennis DeYoung (former singer-keyboardist,Styx) (66)
• Robbie Bachman (drummer, Bachman-Turner Overdrive) (60)
• Irma Thomas (blues singer) (72)
• Molly Ringwald (actress, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, currently on ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager) (45)
• Cybill Shepherd (actress-model, Taxi Driver, Moonlighting, Chances Are) (63)
• John Travolta (actor, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Pulp Fiction, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, The Punisher) (59)
• Vanna White (Wheel Of Fortune hostess) (56)
• Greta Scacchi (actress, Presumed Innocent, Brideshead Revisited) (53)
• Juice Newton (singer) (61) Matt Dillon (actor, The Flamingo Kid, Singles, Wild Things, There's Something About Mary) (49)
• Yoko Ono (widow of ex-Beatle John Lennon) (80)
• Molly Ringwald (actress, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Not Another Teen Movie) (45)
• Cybill Shepherd (actress-model, Taxi Driver, Moonlighting, Chances Are) (63)
• John Travolta (actor, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Pulp Fiction, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, The Taking Of Pelham 123, From Paris With Love) (59)
• Vanna White (Wheel Of Fortune hostess) (56)
• Raine Maida (frontman, Our Lady Peace) (43)
• Dr Dre (rap producer) (48)

ON THIS DAY:

• 1885, Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn was first published.
• 1895, The real "Gipper," George Gipp, the Notre Dame running back who Ronald Reagan portrayed in Knute Rockne All American, was born. He died on December 14th, 1920, after getting a throat infection during one of his final college football games. He was 25.
• 1919, Actor Jack Palance (Shane, Young Guns, Batman, Tango & Cash, City Slickers I and II) was born. He died November 2006 at age 87.
• 1929, The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences announced the names of the winners of its first Academy Awards on the back page of its Bulletin. A ceremony was held three months later.
• 1930, Pluto, possibly the ninth planet in our solar system, was discovered by Claude W. Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory inArizona.
• 1948, Doobie Brothers drummer Keith Knudsen is born. He dies in 2005.
• 1965, "All Day And All Of The Night" by the Kinks peaks at Number Seven on the U.S. pop chart, the same day that "Tired Of Waiting For You" hits Number One on the U.K. pop chart.
• 1967, 'For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield is released.
• 1971, The Grateful Dead kicks off a six-show run at The Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York. During the shows, the audience is asked to participate in an experiment on Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP). Drummer Mickey Hart takes a leave of absence from the band after the first show, to deal with personal issues related to his father's theft of over $150,000 from the group while he managed them. Hart doesn't return to full-time duty until June 1976.
• 1972, The California Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty, calling it "cruel and unusual punishment." Among those whose lives the ruling spared was Charles Manson.
• 1974, Kiss's self-titled debut album is released.
• 1977 Kiss headlinesMadisonSquareGarden in their hometown ofNew York City for the first time.
• 1978, "Breakdown" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers peaks at Number 40 on the pop chart.
• 1978, "Just The Way You Are" by Billy Joel peaks at Number Three on the pop chart, where it stays for two weeks. That same day, The Stranger peaks at Number Two on the album chart, where it stays for six weeks.
• 1978, Little Criminals by Randy Newman peaks at Number Nine on the album chart, where it stays for two weeks.
• 1978, News Of The World by Queen peaks at Number Three on the album chart, where it stays for two weeks.
• 1988, Anthony Kennedy was sworn in as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.
• 1994, at the Norway Winter Games, American speedskater Dan Jansen finally won an Olympic gold medal, after attempts that went back to the 1988 Olympics.
• 1995 Replacements guitarist Bob Stinson dies at the age of 35.
• 1998 Robert Smith of the Cure does battle with the forces of musical evil, as embodied by a monstrous Barbra Streisand, on the animated television show South Park.
• 1998 Two white separatists are arrested inNevada and accused of plotting a bacteriological attack onNew York City subways.
• 2001, Race car driver Dale Earnhardt died in a final-lap crash at the Daytona 500. He was 49.
• 2001, veteran FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested and accused of spying for Russia for more than 15 years.
• 2003 AC/DC issues remastered editions of Back In Black, Highway To Hell, High Voltage, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, and single- and double-CD versions of Live.
• 2003 Details of Ozzfest 2003 are announced, with Korn, Disturbed, Marilyn Manson, and Chevelle all joining headliner Ozzy Osbourne on the main stage.
• 2003 System Of A Down bassist Shavo Odadjian directs his first non-System video, for the song "Mine" by the band Taproot.
• 2003 The album Dub Side Of The Moon, a reggae tribute to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon, is released.
• 2003 The album Kiss My Grass: A Hillbilly Tribute To Kiss by Hayseed Dixie is released.
• 2003 The Rolling Stones welcome special guests Angus and Malcolm Young from AC/DC to the stage at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, Australia, for a rendition of B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby."
• 2003, One hundred ninety-eight people were killed and 147 injured in Daegu, South Korea, when a fire swept through two packed subway trains after a man lit a container of flammable liquid. The man, Kim Dae-han, had a history of mental illness, and told police he wanted to commit suicide in a crowded place. He was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to life in prison.
• 2005 Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale makes his feature film acting debut in Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves as John Constantine from the popular series of Hellblazer graphic novels. Rossdale plays a demonic character called Balthazar.
• 2005 Linkin Park, Rob Zombie, Jay-Z, and No Doubt are among the artists who perform at the Concert For South Asia inAnaheim,California. All proceeds from the show go to Music For Relief, the organization started byLinkinPark and the American Red Cross to raise money for tsunami relief efforts.
• 2005 The surviving members of Alice In Chains -- guitarist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer Sean Kinney -- perform together for the first time since 1996 at a tsunami benefit concert in Seattle. They're joined by Damageplan vocalist Patrick Lachman, Tool singer Maynard James Keenan, and Puddle Of Mudd frontman Wes Scantlin.
• 2008 TVT Records, once named Billboard's top independent label and the place where Nine Inch Nails, Sevendust and others launched their careers, lets almost all its employees go as it prepares to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.