April 21
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Events on This Day
1856 - The first rail train to pass over the mighty Mississippi River between Davenport, Iowa and Rock Island, IL made its journey across a newly completed bridge between the two rail centers.1895 - Woodville Latham demonstrated the first use of a moving picture projected on a screen in New York City. Latham was the guy who came up with the idea of a loop in the film to buffer it before (and after) passing through the shutter -- protecting the film from being torn when passing through the shutter gate. His little invention was known as the Latham Loop.
1940 - The radio program, Take It or Leave It, was first heard on CBS radio on this day. Bob Hawk offered contestants a top prize of $64. No, there were no lovely parting gifts or consolation prizes that we could find. Losers just left.
1945 - Russian troops reached the outskirts of Berlin. The fall of the Third Reich was imminent.
1949 - The prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for Broadcasting was presented to You Bet Your Life star, “The one, the only, Groucho Marx.” This was the first time the honor had been awarded to a comedian.
1956 - Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis Presley’s first single for RCA Victor, hit #1 in the U.S. It stayed perched at the pinnacle of popdom popularity for eight weeks and was Presley’s first million-seller.
1957 - The 11th annual Tony Awards were presented at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York. Long Day’s Journey Into Night won for best Play; My Fair Lady was voted best Musical. Other winners included Frederic March (Long Day’s Journey Into Night), Margaret Leighton (Separate Tables), Rex Harrison, (My Fair Lady) and Judy Holliday (Bells are Ringing).
1959 - The largest fish ever hooked by a rod and reel was landed by Alf Dean. Ol’ Alf told the fellas down at the marina about the 16-foot, 10-inch white shark that weighed in at 2,664 pounds! Wowzers! What kind of line do you think he used? Electric power line, maybe? Dean made the historic catch in South Australia.
1962 - The Century 21 Exposition opened in Seattle, Washington. Otherwise known as the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, the exposition is best remembered for the creation of Seattle’s Space Needle and Alweg Monorail. Much of what was created still exists, including the United States Pavilion which is now the Pacific Science Center.
1963 - The Beatles and The Rolling Stones met for the first time together, at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, England. The Stones opened show.
1968 - (22nd annual) Tony Awards show was held at the at the Shubert Theatre, New York. Winners included Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead (best Play); Hallelujah Baby! (best Musical); Martin Balsam in You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running (best Actor Dramatic); Zoe Caldwell in Portrait of a Queen (best Actress Dramatic); Robert Goulet in The Happy Time (best Actor Musical); and Patricia Routledge in Darling of the Day and Leslie Uggams in Hallelujah Baby! (best Actress(es) Musical).
1969 - Japanese marathon runner Yoshiaki Unetani won the Boston Marathon by finishing first in a record field of 1,152.
1970 - Sportscaster Curt Gowdy was the recipient of the coveted George Foster Peabody Award for achievement in radio and television. Curt, a long-time voice of the Boston Red Sox, NBC and ABC Sports and syndicated programs (including The American Sportsman), was the first sports broadcaster to receive the honor.
1972 - The manned lunar module, Lunar Rover Vehicle 2 (LRV-002) from Apollo 16, landed on the moon with astronauts John Young and Charles Duke. Thomas Mattingly remained in orbit around the moon aboard the command module. This was the third U.S. landing on the moon.
1974 - (28th annual) Tony Awards show was held at the at the Shubert Theatre, New York. Winners included The River Niger (best Play); Raisin (best Musical); Michael Moriarty in Find Your Way Home (best Actor Dramatic); Colleen Dewhurst in A Moon For the Misbegotten (best Actress Dramatic); Christopher Plummer in Cyrano (best Actor Musical); and Virginia Capers in Raisin (best Actress Musical).
1975 - Nguyen Van Thieu resigned as president of South Vietnam after denouncing the United States as untrustworthy. His replacement, Tran Van Huong, prepared for peace talks with North Vietnam as communist forces advanced on Saigon.
1976 - A Cadillac convertible, the ‘last’ American-made rag-top automobile, rolled off the assembly line at GM’s Cadillac production facility in Detroit, MI. This ended a tradition that began in 1916. The tradition didn’t stay ended, however. A few years later, Chrysler Corporation, under chairman Lee Iacocca, began production once again of soft-top cars. Then Ford brought back the convertible Mustang and GM got back in the picture with the convertible Pontiac Sunbird and a new, smaller Cadillac version. It seems that the convertible is just too popular to disappear from the American auto scene!
1977 - The Broadway musical, Annie, opened at the Alvin Theatre in New York City. Andrea McArdle was a shining star in the title role. Annie continued on the Great White Way until January 2, 1983 and 2,377 performances.
1980 - America’s oldest long-distance race, the Boston Marathon, was touched by scandal this day. Actually, the race was sullied, tarnished and disgraced when Rosie Ruiz, a 26-year-old office worker, stunned the sports world when she crossed the finish line in a record time of 2 hours, 31 minutes and 56 seconds. Later, after an investigation, she was stripped of the honor of winning the marathon when evidence showed that she had not run the entire race.
1984 - Michael Jackson’s Thriller album slipped a couple of notches from number 1 to number 3 on the pop album charts. Michael needn’t have been too upset. Thriller was number one for 37 weeks, setting a record in music history for the longest run at the top.
1984 - David Palmer pitched only the fourth shortened perfect game in major-league baseball history. Palmer was pitching the Montreal Expos to a 4-0 lead over the St. Louis Cardinals when the home plate umpire called the game in five innings when the rains came. Palmer had made 57 pitches.
1986 - The once-notorious Lexington Hotel in Chicago received a visitor, in the person of Geraldo Rivera, along with a camera crew. A record audience watched as the long-sealed vault of racketeer, Al Capone was opened during a much-hyped TV special. Guess what? All that Geraldo found were broken bottles and no trace that Capone and his gang had ever stashed anything there.
1990 - Pope John Paul II was greeted by hundreds of thousands of people as he visited Czechoslovakia to help celebrate the nation’s peaceful overthrow of Communism.
1993 - Marc Andreessen, Eric Bina and colleagues released Mosaic, the first graphics-capable Internet browser. The following year, Andreessen and Jim Clark founded Mosaic Communications, then changed the company’s name to Netscape. Their first big-time browser, called Mosaic Netscape, was released Sep 12, 1994.
1995 - The FBI arrested former U.S. soldier Timothy McVeigh at an Oklahoma jail where he had spent two days on minor traffic and weapons charges. McVeigh was charged with the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City truck-bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. 168 people were killed by the blast and resulting collapse of the building.
1996 - Jimmy ‘the Greek’ Snyder, age 76, died of heart failure in a Las Vegas hospital. Snyder turned oddsmaking into mainstream entertainment as part of CBS-TV’s Sunday NFL Today pregame shows and became a popular personality.
1997 - The ashes of 1960s LSD guru Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were blasted into space (actually an orbit of the Earth) in the world’s first space funeral. Ashes of twenty-two other brave souls headed off into their final frontier with Leary and Roddenberry, including space physicist Gerard O'Neill and rocket scientist Krafft Ehricke. Each family paid $4,800 (they also got a commemorative video of the launch) to get 7 grams of their loved ones’ ashes into the capsule. “The capsule orbits for a little while, 18 months to 10 years, then it will burn up in the atmosphere. It will be like a shooting star,” said Leary’s friend, Charles Chafer, who arranged the blast off.
1998 - Astronomers announced in Washington that they had discovered signs of a family of planets forming around a star 220 light-years away.
1999 - ‘America’s Boyfriend’, actor and bandleader Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers died in Rancho Mirage, CA at 94 years of age.
2000 - Films that opened in the U.S.: Gossip, with Kames Marsden, Lena Headey, Norman Reedus and Kate Hudson; Love & Basketball, featuring Omar Epps, Sanaa Lathan and Alfre Woodard; and U-571, with Matthew Mcconaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel and Jon Bon Jovi.
2002 - Extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen shocked the pols when he qualified to face incumbent Jacques Chirac in the runoff for president of France. Chirac, however, won.
2003 - Nina Simone, dubbed the ‘High Priestess of Soul’, died. She was 70 years old. Simone had her first -- and biggest -- hit in 1959 with I Loves You, Porgy.
2003 - Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya won the mens’s division of the Boston Marathon (2:10:11). Svetlana Zakharova of Russia won for the women (2:25:20).
2004 - Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory died at 85 years of age.
2005 - In a rare TV address, Canada’s Prime Minister Paul Martin apologized to the nation for a corruption scandal that has shaken his Liberal Party, and threatened his minority government.
2005 - Anna Ayala, the woman who claimed she found a finger in her bowl of Wendy’s chili on Mar 22, 2005 in San Jose, CA, was arrested at her home in Las Vegas, NV -- charged with felony attempted grand larceny...
2006 - New movies in U.S. theatres: American Dreamz, starring Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore, Marcia Gay Harden, Chris Klein, Jennifer Coolidge, Seth Meyers, John Cho, Judy Greer, Sam Golzari and Willem Dafoe; The Sentinel, with Kiefer Sutherland, Michael Douglas, Kim Basinger and Eva Longoria; and Silent Hill, starring Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen and Jodelle Ferland.
2006 - Crude oil futures closed at $75.17 a barrel in New York, amid increasing concerns about the Iranian nuclear crisis and a U.S. gasoline supply crunch.
2006 - Miss Kentucky, Tara Elizabeth Conner, was crowned Miss USA in the 55th annual pageant in Baltimore, MD.
2007 - An American billionaire who paid millions for a trip to outer space returned to Earth in a space capsule that also carried a cosmonaut and an American astronaut -- making a soft landing on the Kazakh steppe. Charles Simonyi, a 58-year-old native of Hungary who co-designed Microsoft Word and Excel, smiled and chatted with rescuers who helped him out of the Soyuz capsule. He appeared energized by his $25 million, two-week trip.
2007 - Reid Stowe (55) and his girlfriend, Soanya Ahmad (23), set sail from Hoboken NJ, on a voyage planned to last 1,000 days and nights with no port calls for supplies.
2008 - Australian Resources Minister Martin Ferguson announced that the country had extended control of its continental shelf by nearly 2.5 million square kilometres (976,562.5 sq. miles). This, under an agreement with the United Nations.
2008 - The Bank of England announced a 50-billion-pound plan, called a special liquidity scheme, to loosen up Britain’s home loan market.
2008 - The Paris (France) city council bestowed the title of ‘honorary citizen’ on the Dalai Lama.
2009 - Alameda, California Bank manager Sokvoeun Sou (27) was arrested for stealing some $650,000 from the retirement account of acclaimed opera star Kiri Te Kanawa (65).
2009 - Japan’s highest court upheld the death sentence of a woman convicted of murdering four neighbors and sickening dozens more with arsenic-laced curry. A district court had convicted Masumi Hayashi (47) in 2002 of deliberately lacing a pot of curry with arsenic and serving it to neighbors at a festival in July 1998 in Wakayama city.
2010 - The Havasupai Indian tribe ended a 7-year legal fight with Arizona State University over blood samples members of the tribe gave to university researchers for diabetes research. Because the samples were also used to study schizophrenia, inbreeding and ancient population migration, Havasupai tribal members called it a case of genetic piracy. The university’s Board of Regents agreed to pay $700,000 to 41 of the tribe’s members, return the blood samples and provide other forms of assistance to the impoverished Havasupai.
2011 - Italian automaker Fiat, nearing its goal of taking a majority stake and full control of Chrysler LLC by the end of 2011, announced a deal to buy another 16 percent share for $1.3 billion.
2012 - Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox pitched a perfect game, beating the Mariners in Seattle 4-0. It was baseball’s 21st perfect game -- where no opposing batter reaches base by hit, walk or error.
2012 - Three more Secret Service agents resigned as a result of the Colombia prostitution scandal. And it appeared that the Colombian prostitute who triggered the scandal got angry with two Secret Service agents who refused to pay her full price for servicing the two of them, leading to the financial dispute over between $40 and $60.
2013 - China jumped all over the human rights record of the U.S. in response to Washington’s April 19 report on rights around the world. The Chinese report said that U.S. military operations had infringed on rights abroad and that political donations in the U.S. had thwarted its democracy. The report went on to say firearms-related crimes posed serious threats to the lives and personal security of citizens in the U.S.
2014 - More than 32,000 participated in the first Boston Marathon since 2013’s deadly bombings. Many runners had the names of victims scrawled on their bodies or their race bibs in the powerful show of resilience.
2015 - The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists issued its annual list of the ten most censored countries: Eritrea (East Africa) topped the list followed by North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Iran, China, Myanmar and Cuba.
2015 - Greenpeace East Asia reported that 90% of Chinese cities had failed to meet national air quality standards for the first three months of 2015. Even after pollution levels in some of China’s smoggiest cities had been cut by nearly a third.
2016 - Superstar Prince Rogers Nelson, singer, songwriter, arranger and instrumentalist, died at his home in Minnesota (57; accidental fentanyl opioid overdose). Prince sold more than 100 million records, won eight Grammys, an Academy Award and a Golden Gobe. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, his first year of eligibility and "Rolling Stone" ranked Prince at number 27 on its list of 100 “most influential artists of the rock & roll era.”
2017 - Among the movies opening in the U.S. this day were: Free Fire, starring Sharlto Copley, Brie Larson and Armie Hammer; The Promise, with Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac and Shohreh Aghdashloo; Unforgettable, starring Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl and Whitney Cummings; and Phoenix Forgotten, with Matt Biedel, Ana Dela Cruz, Florence Hartigan.
2017 - A federal judge in Detroit sentenced Volkswagen AG to three years’ probation for the German automaker’s diesel emissions fraud. The sentence was part of a $4.3 billion settlement and Judge Sean Cox ordered Volkswagen to pay a $2.8 billion criminal penalty for cheating on diesel emissions tests.
2018 - The European Union agreed to a trade deal with Mexico that removed tariffs on cheese, chocolate, pasta and other foods. The deal updated and expanded a two-decade-old agreement to include financial services and online commerce, among other sectors.
2019 - A fire erupted in a Tesla car in an underground garage in Shanghai, China. Tesla later reported that the fire was caused by the failure of a single battery module and investigators had found no defects in the car’s systems. But the company revised the charge and thermal management settings on Model S and Model X vehicles to help protect the battery.
2020 - The Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report that concluded Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency.
2020 - COVID-19 news: 1)The U.S. Congress approved spending $25 billion for COVID-19 testing. 2)Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield warned that a second coronavirus wave in winter would be “even more difficult than the one we just went through.” 3)Spain unveiled a series of measures aimed at helping prostitutes and victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation survive the coronavirus lockdown. The measures gave victims access to improved support services.
2021 - Regulators reported that the Emergent Biosciences Baltimore factory -- contracted to make Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine -- was dirty, didn’t follow proper manufacturing procedures and had poorly trained staff. All this resulted in contamination of material that was going to be put in the vaccine.
2021 - Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced that his office had stopped prosecuting prostitution. At Vance’s request, a New York judge agreed to dismiss thousands of prostitution-related offenses dating to the 1970s. “Black, Brown and East Asian women and girls, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people have been disproportionately harmed by laws like ‘loitering for the purpose of prostitution’ and ‘unlicensed practice of a profession’ – a charge that was often used to make arrests in massage businesses,” Judy Harris Kluger, executive director of the legal services provider Sanctuary for Families, said. She added that the district attorney was making “critical changes in its approach to the sex trade and the way our communities support those most at risk of exploitation.”
2022 - More U.S pressure over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: President Biden pledged more weaponry ($800 million worth) for Ukraine and said he would ask Congress for still more to help bolster support for the Ukrainian military. This, as Ukraine faced an onslaught by Russia on its eastern flank. Biden also announced that the U.S. had banned all Russian-affiliated ships from its ports, joining Canada and European nations who had done the same.
2022 - The Florida legislature voted to revoke Disney World’s designation as a special tax district during a dispute with Governor Ron DeSantis over a new education law. The Reedy Creek Improvement District was established in 1967 effectively allowed the company to self-govern its 25,000-acre theme park complex. The governor signed the bill the following day. The new Central Florida Tourism Oversight District that replaced Reedy Creek, however, complained that their Disney-controlled predecessors pulled a fast one on them by passing restrictive covenants that stripped the new board of many of its powers.
2022 -Movies scheduled to open in the U.S. included Chevalier, starring Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, Sian Clifford and Minnie Driver; Evil Dead Rise, with Alyssa Sutherland, Lily Sullivan and Morgan Davies; and Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Alexander Ludwig, Antony Starr, Jonny Lee Miller and Emily Beecham.
2023 - The Supreme Court ordered the abortion pill mifepristone to remain widely available, blocking a ban by a Texas U.S. District Judge. The FDA had originally approved mifepristone, which is also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex, in 2000. The drug is used (in the U.S.) in conjunction with the drug misoprostol: Mifepristone blocks the effects of the hormones necessary to maintain a pregnancy, while misoprostol causes the uterus to contract, expelling the pregnancy.
2023 - The Equality Commission reported Northern Ireland had almost the same number of Catholics and Protestants in its workforce -- for the first time since records began some 30 years earlier. The watchdog found that from a total workforce of 564,296 in 2021, 43.5% were Protestant and 43.4% were Catholic. In 1990, just 34.9% of the workforce was Catholic, with 65.1% Protestant. Credit went to legislation that stamped out discrimination in employment in the region.
and more...
Birthdays on This Day April 21
1782 - Friedrich Froebel
teacher, author, toy maker: invented kindergarten; died June 21, 18521816 - Charlotte Bronte
author: Jane Eyre, The Professor, Shirley, Villette; died Mar 31, 18551838 - John Muir
conservationist: influential in the establishment of the U.S. National Parks system and U.S. forest conservation; Muir Woods National Monument in California named after him; died Dec 24, 19141887 - Joe McCarthy
baseball manager: Chicago Cubs, NY Yankees, Boston Red Sox: holds record: highest winning percentage: [.615]; died Jan 13, 19781905 - Edmund G. ‘Pat’ Brown
governor of California [1959-1967]; died Feb 16, 19961906 - Ken Strong
Pro Football Hall of Famer [halfback, punter, placekicker]: New York Univ; Staten Island Stapletons, New York Giants, New York Yankees: career: scored 479 points; died Oct 5, 19791915 - Anthony Quinn
Academy Award-winning actor: Viva Zapata! [1952], Lust for Life [1956]; The Guns of Navarone, The Inheritance, The Old Man and the Sea, Zorba the Greek; died June 3, 20011919 - Don Cornell (Louis Varlaro)
singer: It isn’t Fair, I’ll Walk Alone, I’m Yours, Heart of My Heart, This is the Beginning of the End, Hold My Hand, The Bible Tells Me So, Most of All, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; died Feb 23, 20041926 - Queen Elizabeth II (Elisabeth Mary)
Queen of the United Kingdom [1952-2022]; eldest daughter of George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon; married Philip Mountbatten [1947]: four children: Charles [Prince of Wales], Anne, Andrew, Edward; died Sep 8, 20221931 - Carl (Robert) Belew
country singer: Welcome Back to My World, songwriter: Am I That Easy to Forget?, Stop the World and Let Me Off, Lonely Street, What’s He Doing in My World?; died Oct 31, 19901932 - Elaine May
actress: California Suite; comedienne: half of a comedy duo with Mike Nichols; director: A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, Ishtar, Mikey and Nicky1932 - Daniel Melnick
TV producer: The Flintstones, The Fugitive, Ages of Man, Death of a Salesman, Get Smart, NYPD; film producer: Straw Dogs, Network, Kramer vs. Kramer, The China Syndrome, Roxanne, Blue Streak; president of Columbia Pictures; his movies won more than two dozen Academy Awards; died Oct 13, 20091935 - Charles Grodin
actor: Clifford, Beethoven I & II, Midnight Run, Dave; director, host: The Charles Grodin Show, 60 Minutes II; died May 18, 20211936 - Reg Fleming
hockey: NHL: Montreal Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks, Boston Bruins, NY Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, Buffalo Sabres; died Jul 11, 20091938 - Ernie Maresca
entertainer: Shout! Shout! [Knock Yourself Out], songwriter: Runaround Sue, The Wanderer; died Jul 8, 20151940 - Jacques Caron
hockey: NHL: LA Kings, SL Blues; coach: NJ Devils1947 - Al (Alonza Benjamin) Bumbry (Bumbrey)
baseball: Baltimore Orioles (Rookie of the Year: 1973/World Series: 1979, 1983/all-star: 1980), SD Padres1947 - Iggy Pop (James Newell Osterburg)
singer, songwriter: group: Psychedelic Stooges: LP: The Stooges1947 - John Weider
musician: bass: group: Family: No Mule’s Fool, Weaver’s Answer, In My Own Time, Burlesque, LPs: Fearless, Bandstand1948 - Paul Davis
songwriter, singer: Cool Night, If We Can Get Through the Night, I Got Crazy, 65 Love Affair; died Apr 22, 20081949 - Patti LuPone
actress: Evita, Song Spinner, Driving Miss Daisy, Wise Guys, 1941, Life Goes On; more1951 - Paul Carrack
musician: guitar, singer, songwriter: groups: Noise to Go, Mike and the Mechanics, Ace: How Long; Squeeze: Goodbye Girl, Up the Junction, Cool for Cats; solo: LPs: Paul Carrack, Suburban Voodoo1951 - Tony Danza
actor: Family Law, Who’s the Boss, Taxi, Angels in the Outfield, Baby Talk, The Good Cop; TV talk show host: The Tony Danza Show [co-executive producer]1954 - James Morrison
actor: Jarhead, Wilderness Survival for Girls, Catch Me If You Can, The One, The Wonder Cabinet, White Dwarf, Falling Down1954 - Janet Zarish
actress: One Life to Live, Law & Order, The Next Big Thing, The Object of My Affection, Malcolm X, Mystic Pizza, Danny1957 - Jesse Orosco
baseball [pitcher]: New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, Milwaukee Brewers, Baltimore Orioles, St. Louis Cardinals, Minnesota Twins, New York Yankees and San Diego Padres1958 - Andie (Rosalie Anderson) MacDowell
model, actress: Multiplicity, Unstrung Heroes, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Short Cuts, Groundhog Day, Green Card, sex lies and videotape, St. Elmo’s Fire, The Player, Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes1958 - Michael Zarnock
author: writes collector guides and articles about Hot Wheels® toy cars and accessories: The Ultimate Guide to Hot Wheels Variations, Standard Catalog of Die-Cast Vehicles1959 - Robert Smith
musician: guitar, singer, songwriter: group: The Cure: A Forest, Charlotte Sometimes, Let’s Go to Bed, Love Cats, The Caterpillar, Inbetween Days1960 - Michel Goulet
Hockey Hall of Famer [left wing]: Quebec Nordiques, Chicago Blackhawks; career: scored 548 goals, had 1,152 points; director of player personnel for the Colorado Avalanche
1963 - Ken Caminiti
baseball [third base]: San Jose State Univ; Houston Astros, San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves; died Oct 10, 20041965 - Ed Belfour
hockey [goalie]: Chicago Blackhawks, San Jose Sharks, Dallas Stars, Toronto Maple Leafs
1968 - Christian Hoff
actor: All My Children, Family Values, Encino Man, Honor Thy Mother, Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again, Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers, Quincy M.E.1969 - Dwight Hollier
football [middle linebacker]: Univ of North Carolina; NFL: Miami Dolphins, Indianapolis Colts1969 - Toby Stephens
actor: Die Another Day, Marathon, Severance, The Best Man, The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey, Cambridge Spies, Perfect Strangers, Space Cowboys1970 - Rob Riggle
actor: The Hangover, 21 Jump Street, Saturday Night Live [2004–2005], The Daily Show [2006-2008], The Other Guys, The Lorax, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, Step Brothers, NTSF:SD:SUV::1970 - Nicole Sullivan
actress: The King of Queens, One Sung Hero, The Adventures of Big Handsome Guy and His Little Friend, Barry Dingle, Guess Who, The Third Wheel, Raines1971 - Eric Mabius
actor: Ugly Betty, The L Word, Eyes, Cruel Intentions, The Crow: Salvation, Resident Evil, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, Chicago Fire1975 - Charlie O’Connell
actor: Sliders, Deadly Water, Kiss the Bride, The New Guy, Dude, Where’s My Car?, Cruel Intentions; Brother of actor Jerry O’Connell1977 - Jamie Salé
figure skater: won Pairs gold at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City [medal was shared with Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze]1979 - James McAvoy
actor: State of Play, Shameless, Children of Dune, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Last King of Scotland, Atonement, Wanted, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past; stage: Three Days of Rain, Macbeth; voice actor: Gnomeo & Juliet, Arthur Christmas1980 - Vincent Lecavalier
hockey: Tampa Bay Lightning [1998-2013: 2004 Stanley Cup champs]; Philadelphia Flyers [2013-2016]1980 - Tony Romo
football [quarterback]: Univ of Eastern Illinois; NFL: Dallas Cowboys [2003–2016]; CBS-TV NFL color analyst1981 - Kate Bell
actress: Grange Hill, Anglesey Road, Dog’s Dinner1983 - Gugu Mbatha-Raw
actress: Belle, Beyond the Lights, Miss Sloane, Black Mirror, Beauty and the Beast, A Wrinkle in Time, Motherless Brooklyn, Misbehaviour, Summerland, The Morning Show, Loki1988 - Robbie Amell
actor: True Jackson, The Tomorrow People, The Duff, The Flash, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, Upload1992 - Joc Pederson
baseball [center field]: Los Angeles Dodgers [2014-2020]: 2017, 2018 World Series; Chicago Cubs [2021]; Atlanta Braves [2021]; San Francisco Giants [2022–2023]; Arizona Diamondbacks [2024– ]
and still more...
Hit Music on This Day April 21
1951If (facts) - Perry Como
Mockingbird Hill (facts) - Patti Page
1960
1969
1978
1987
1996
2005
2014
and even more...
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end...
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