August 20
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Events on This Day
1741 - Alaska was discovered by Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering. That’s how the Bering Sea got its name.1866 - The National Labor Union advocated an eight-hour workday. Industry, however, did not heed the request. Workers commonly worked 10 or 12 hour days -- or more.
1920 - Allen Woodring won the 200-meter run at the Olympic Games held at Antwerp, Belgium. And he wasn’t even wearing his own shoes. The winning feet were in a borrowed pair.
1939 - Tarzan got married. No, not to Jane. Johnny Weissmuller, who played Tarzan in films, married Beryl Scott.
1939 - Orrin Tucker’s orchestra recorded Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh!, on Columbia Records.
1939 - The National Bowling Association was founded in Detroit, MI. It was the first bowling association in the U.S. for African-Americans.
1940 - Exiled Russian dissident Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City. Ramon Mercader (aka Jacques Mornard aka Frank Jacson), one of Stalin’s hired assassins, did the dirty deed using an ice pick to the back of Trotsky’s head.
1942 - Glenn Seaborg, and other scientests at the University of Chicago, successfully isolated Plutonium-239 in visible amounts. Plutonium was the first of the human-made elements.
1944 - U.S. and British forces destroyed the German Seventh Army at the Falaise Pocket, west of Paris, capturing 50,000 German troops.
1945 - Tommy Brown became the youngest player to hit a home run in a major-league ball game. Brown, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, was 17 years, 8 months and 14 days old.
1949 - Cleveland’s Indians and Chicago’s White Sox played at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland before the largest crowd to see a nighttime major-league baseball game: 78,382.
1951 - The first I.D. jingle company to sing over pre-recorded backgrounds, PAMS, Inc., was formed this day. Former radio studio musician Bill Meeks put PAMS together in Dallas, Texas.
1955 - Col. Horace A. Hanes, a U.S. Air Force pilot, flew to an altitude of 40,000 feet. Hanes reached a speed of 822.135 miles per hour in a Super Sabrejet.
1961 - The Philadelphia Phillies snapped their modern major-league record of 23 consecutive losses by beating the Milwaukee Braves (score: 7-4).
1969 - Andy Williams received a gold record for the album Happy Heart on Columbia Records.
1971 - The life sentence of Lieutenant William Calley, convicted in the My Lai (Vietnam) massacre, was reduced to twenty years.
1974 - The new U.S. President, Gerald R. Ford, assuming office after Richard Nixon’s resignation, nominated Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president.
1975 - A Ceskoslovenske Aerolinie Ilyushin-62 crashed during its landing approach south of Damascus, Syria. 126 people were killed.
1977 - Best of My Love, by The Emotions, topped the pop charts. It had a number-one run of four weeks.
1977 - Voyager 2 was launched for fly-by of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
1980 - Italian Reinhold Messner became the first person to complete a solo -- and without supplemental oxygen -- ascent of Mount Everest.
1982 - President Ronald Reagan announced that a contingent of U.S. Marines was joining French and Italian troops as peace-keepers in Beirut.
1985 - The machine that revolutionized the world’s offices, the original Xerox 914 copier, took its place among the honored machines of other eras at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. The document copier had been formally introduced to the world in March of 1960. In just twenty-five years, the machine, invented by Chester Carlson, a patent lawyer, had become obsolete enough to make it into the museum. We’re sure some offices, somewhere, are still using the 914, thermal paper, liquid toner and all.
1986 - U.S. Census Bureau officials reported that the U.S. population stood at 240,468,000 and the median age reached an all-time high of 31-1/2 years.
1988 - Steve Winwood’s Roll With It -- the single and the album -- were #1 in the U.S. This was the first week at the top for the album. The single had been number one since July 30th.
1989 - Video executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty, were shot to death in their Beverly Hills, California mansion by their sons, Lyle and Erik.
1992 - In the early hours of the day, the Republican National Convention in Houston renominated President George Bush (I) and Vice President Quayle. That evening, Bush delivered a hard-hitting speech in which he attacked the Democrats and promised to seek across-the-board tax cuts if re-elected.
1995 - The New Delhi-bound Purushottam Express rammed the packed Kalindi Express that had stopped on the tracks after hitting a cow in northern India. The crash at Firozabad, in Uttar pradesh, killed 250 people, and left more than 200 injured.
1996 - President Bill Clinton approved the first U.S. minimum-wage increase in five years. The raise of 90 cents eventually brought the hourly minimum by to $5.15 per hour.
1997 - United Parcel Service drivers put away picket signs, put on brown shirts and shorts, and called on customers again as the delivery giant began the process of recovering from the Teamsters’ costly strike.
1998 - The Supreme Court of Canada released its opinion on the Quebec Secession Reference. The Court “found there to be no basis, either under Canadian domestic law or under international law, on which the governmental institutions of Quebec could claim any legal right to secede from Canada unilaterally.”
1999 - Films opening in U.S. theatres: Mickey Blue Eyes, with Hugh Grant, Jeanne Tripplehorn, James Caan, James Fox, Burt Young, Joe Viterelli, Scott Thompson and Paul Lazar; Teaching Mrs. Tingle, starring Helen Mirren, Katie Holmes, Marisa Coughlan, Barry Watson, Liz Stauber, Jeffrey Tambor, Lesley Ann Warren, Molly Ringwald, Vivica A. Fox and Michael Mckean; and Universal Soldier, The Return, with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Michael Jai White, Heidi Schanz, Kiana Tom, Daniel Von Bargen, Xander Berkeley, Bill Goldberg and Karis Paige Bryant.
2000 - Tiger Woods won the 82nd PGA Championship in Louisville, Kentucky. Woods birdied the last two holes in regulation and won the championship in a playoff over Bob May, becoming the first player since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors (Masters, U.S. Open, British Open) in one year. He was the first player to win back-to-back PGA championships since Denny Shute in 1936 and 1937.
2001 - Actress Kim Stanley died in Santa Fe, NM. She was 76 years old. Stanley’s movie roles were few and far between, as she was best known for her stellar performances on stage, including successes on Broadway. But when she did step in front of the camera, her performances were memorable. She was nominated for an Academy Award twice: one for her role of the slightly unhinged medium in the The Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), and another for her characterization of the domineering and wrathful mother of Frances Farmer in Frances (1982).
2003 - The U.S. won the women’s overall team gold medal at the World Gymnastics Championships in Anaheim, CA. Romania took the silver medal and Australia, the bronze.
2004 - New movies in U.S. theatres: Benji Off the Leash!, starring Nick Whitaker, Chris Kendrick, Christy Summerhays, Neil Barth, Randall Newsome, Duane Stephens, Carlton W. Bluford, Nate Bynum, Melinda Clarkson-Haynes, Lincoln Hoppe and, of course, Benji; Exorcist: The Beginning, with Stellen Skarsgård, Isabella Scorupco, Alessandra Martines, James D’Arcy, Ilario Bisi-Pedro, Ralph Brown, Alan Ford, Andrew French, Antonie Kamerling, Eddie Osei and Julian Wadham; Nicotina, starring Marta Belaustegui, Rosa María Bianchi, Lucas Crespi, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Rafael Inclán, Enoc Leaño, Diego Luna, Carmen Madrid, documentary Uncovered: The War on Iraq, with avid Albright, Robert Baer, Milton Bearden, Rand Beers, Bill Christison, David Corn, Philip Coyle, John Dean, Patrick Eddington, Chas Freeman, Graham Fuller, Mel Goodman, John Brady Kiesling, Karen Kwiatkowski, Patrick Lang, David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Clare Short, Stansfield Turner, Henry Waxman, Thomas E. White, Joe Wilson, Mary Ann Wright and Peter Zimmerman; and Without a Paddle, starring Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, Dax Shepard, Ethan Suplee, Abraham Benrubi, Rachel Blanchard, Burt Reynolds, Christina Moore, Bonnie Somerville, Danielle McCormack, Liddy Holloway, Morgan Reese Fairhead, Mia Blake, Tony Brown, Kody Shaw and Cameron Wakefield.
2004 - U.S. talk show host Regis Philbin set the world record for living a lifetime on TV. Logging 15,188 hours on the tube yielded him fame, fortune, and on this day, a place in the record books. The broadcast of Live With Regis and Kelly this day gave the talk-show host the Guinness World Record for most hours on camera. He passed broadcaster Hugh Downs for the record, as calculated by Guinness World Records researcher Stuart Claxton. “Now it’s all a big blur,” Philbin said, as he looked back on his career that began as a San Diego news anchor in 1958. “When you look back that’s a lot of hours on TV.” With the longest resume in television, Philbin wonders, “You’d think it might make me better, but I don’t know.”
2005 - The ashes of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson were blown into the sky above Woody Creek, CO. The ashes were fired from a cannon atop a 153-foot tower that Thompson designed (in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button) ; and to the tune of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man.
2007 - New York City hotelier Leona Helmsley died at her home in Greenwich, CT. She was 87 years old. Helmsley was a flamboyant personality who had a reputation for tyrannical behavior that earned her the nickname ‘Queen of Mean’.
2007 - Passengers used emergency slides to evacuate a China Airlines jet just minutes before the plane burst into a fireball on the tarmac in Japan. All 165 people aboard escaped unhurt, including the pilot, who had to escape by jumping from the cockpit.
2008 - The Rocker opened in U.S. theatres. The romantic comedy stars Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate, Josh Gad, Teddy Geiger, Jane Lynch, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Howard Hesseman, Jeff Garlin, Bradley Cooper, Lonny Ross, Will Arnett and Fred Armisen.
2008 - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski signed a deal to build a missile defense base in Poland. The agreement prompted Russia to warn of a possible attack against the former Soviet satellite. The deal included an American Patriot anti-aircraft and anti-missile battery in Poland.
2009 - Usain Bolt of Jamaica set a world record of 19.19 seconds in the 200 meters at the world championships in Berlin, adding to the gold he won in the 100 meter race a few days before.
2010 - New movies in U.S. theatres: Lottery Ticket, featuring Bow Wow, Brandon T. Jackson, Ice Cube, Naturi Naughton and Keith David; Nanny McPhee Returns, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ralph Fiennes, Emma Thompson, Maggie Smith and Rhys Ifans; Piranha 3D, with Eli Roth, Dina Meyer, Elisabeth Shue, Jerry O’Connell and Christopher Lloyd; Soul Kitchen, with Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birol Ünel, Anna Bederke and Pheline Roggan; and What If..., starring Kevin Sorbo, Kristy Swanson, John Ratzenberger, Debby Ryan and Kristin Minter.
2010 - India’s Cabinet cleared a nuclear liability bill, a crucial step on the path to bringing foreign companies into its potentially vast nuclear energy market. The new law capped the liability of foreign firms at $320 million in the case of an industrial accident.
2010 - France put about 100 Gypsies, called Roma, on a charter flight headed to their native Romania. It was the second day in a row that France had expelled Roma in a much criticized government crackdown.
2011 - Some 2,000 women draped sexy lingerie over their street clothes and marched through Cape Town, South Africa. The demonstration was aimed at drawing attention to the international ‘SlutWalk campaign’, which disputed the notion that a woman’s appearance could excuse sexual attacks.
2012 - President Barack Obama said the U.S. would reconsider its opposition to military involvement in the Syrian civil war if President Bashar Assad’s regime deployed or used chemical or biological weapons. He called such action a ‘red line’ for the United States. Obama said, “We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region, that that’s a red line for us, and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front, or the use of chemical weapons. That would change my calculations significantly.”
2013 - India launched a new food law said to be aimed at giving 5 kilos of rice or wheat each month at a nominal price to millions of people. India’s ruling Congress party chief, Sonia Gandhi, said 800 million Indians would benefit from the law, aimed at fighting endemic malnutrition. But Delhi BJP chief Vijay Goel, leader of a protest of the new law said, “This is not the food security bill but vote security bill. It is a gimmick ahead of the elections to get votes.”
2014 - Bank of America reached a record $17 billion settlement to resolve a government investigation into its role in the sale of mortgage backed securities before the 2008 financial crises.
2014 - Russian police arrested four people who climbed a Moscow skyscraper and attached a Ukrainian flag to its spire. They were charged with vandalism and could face three years in jail.
2015 - A car ferry carrying some 2,400 Syrian refugees arrived on the Greek mainland as the wave of migrants fleeing persecution, conflict and poverty continued unabated.
2015 - Divers from the S/V Capitana said they had found $4.5 million in Spanish gold coins in the wreckage of a fleet of eleven Spanish ships that sank in the early 1700s off the coast of Vero Beach, Florida.
2016 - A suicide bombing at an outdoor wedding party in Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey killed 54 people, including 22 children. Turkey blamed the Islamic State. Officials said a child (age 12-14) was used as the suicide bomber.
2016 - Brazil claimed its first Olympic gold in soccer by beating Germany. at the Rio Olympics. The win boosted the spirits of the country that had been dealing with a recession, political turmoil, health scares and rampant crime - not to mention the lingering effects of a 7-1 los against Germany in the 2014 World Cup.
2016 - The U.S. women’s basketball team won its sixth consecutive Olympic gold medal. And Diana Taurasi, Tamika Catchings and Sue Bird, while routing Spain 101-72, won their fourth Olympic gold medal in the process. “It’s hard to quantify with words,” U.S. coach Geno Auriemma said of the trio’s impact and importance. “There are some things that they do that you just can’t describe.” More Olympic news...
2017 - Comedy legend Jerry Lewis died in Las Vegas, NV. His many films included The Delicate Delinquent (1957), Cinderfella (1960), The Bellboy (1960), The Nutty Professor (1963), The Disorderly Orderly (1964), The Big Mouth (1967), Which Way to the Front? (1970) and The King of Comedy (1983). Lewis supported fundraising for muscular dystrophy research, serving for 60 years as spokesman for and national chairman of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and as host of The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon every Labor Day weekend -- for 44 years. And he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the organization in 1977.
2018 - European leaders heralded Greece’s exit from eight years of international bailouts as the end of the eurozone’s long financial crisis — while warning that Athens must stick to policy commitments it made in exchange for €289 billion in loans. Pierre Moscovici, the European Union’s commissioner for economic affairs, said it was a return to normality for the Greek people. “From today Greece will be treated like any other euro area country”, he said in Brussels. Mário Centeno, the president of the eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, said Greece had “regained the control it fought for” during years of tough negotiations with its eurozone creditors.
2018 - Israel announced a change in its gun regulations to enable more civilians to apply for licenses. More than half a million Israelis became eligible for gun permits under the change, for the purpose of improving responses to terror attacks. Authorities said the change will increase security but others argued it would stoke violence.
2019 - Three more women sued the estate of Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan federal court, saying they were recruited to provide massages for the financier -- but then were sexually abused.
2019 - POTUS Trump cancelled a visit to Denmark after Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rebuffed his interest in purchasing Greenland. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s first female prime minister (2011-2015), expressed incredulity. “Is this some sort of joke?” she said, “Deeply insulting to the people of Greenland and Denmark.” Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who became prime minister after Thorning-Schmidt, said, “It is no shame not to show up if you haven’t been invited ... but if you have invited yourself.” Morten Ostergaard, the leader of Denmark’s Social Liberal party, said Trump’s move “shows why, more than ever, we should consider the European Union countries as our closest allies.” He added, “The man is incalculable.”
2020 - The Democratic National Convention capped off four days of remote speeches, video montages and roll-call votes with a final address from the party’s presidential nominee, Joe Biden. This, while 73 former Republican national security officials released a letter endorsing Biden and calling POTUS Trump unfit for the White House. “While we — like all Americans — had hoped that Donald Trump would govern wisely, he has disappointed millions of voters who put their faith in him and has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term,” the former senior officials said.
2020 - Former White House adviser Steve Bannon was arrested on charges that he ripped off donors to an online fundraising scheme called, We Build The Wall. Federal prosecutors said Bannon and three others “orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors” in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $25 million to build a wall along the southern border of the United States. Bannon was arrested on a yacht owned by his friend Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire, off Westbrook, Connecticut.
2020 - Facebook removed from its site some 800 QAnon-affiliated groups, 100 pages and 1,500 ads connected to QAnon. In July, Twitter had announced that it had removed more than 7,000 accounts related to the conspiracy and promised a sweeping ban on content related to QAnon.
2021 - Movies released in the U.S. (theatres and virtual) this day included: The Night House, with Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Evan Jonigkeit; the animated PAW Patrol: The Movie, featuring characters voiced by Iain Armitage, Will Brisbin, Ron Pardo, Marsai Martin, Yara Shahidi, Kim Kardashian, Randall Park, Dax Shepard and Jimmy Kimmel; The Protégé, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Robert Patrick and Maggie Q; Reminiscence, starring Rebecca Ferguson, Hugh Jackman, Natalie Martinez and Thandiwe Newton; Demonic, with Andrea Agur, Nathalie Boltt, Terry Chen and Chris William Martin; Flag Day, starring Katheryn Winnick, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn and Eddie Marsan; Ma Belle, My Beauty, with Idella Johnson, Hannah Pepper, Lucien Guignard and Sivan Noam Shimon; Risen, starring Buffy Anne Littaua, Natalie Rose, Terri Purchase and Wassim Hawat; and Wildland, with Sandra Guldberg Kampp, Sidse Babett Knudsen andJoachim Fjelstrup.
2021 - Singer, songwriter Tom T. Hall died at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. He was 85 years old. Hall wrote 12 #1 hit songs, with 26 more that reached the Top 10, including the #1 international pop crossover hit Harper Valley PTA and I Love, which reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100.
2021 - Wisconsin began a $100 incentive for people to get vaccinated. The program was part of the fight against the fast-spreading delta variant of COVID-19.
2022 - Actors Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez tied the knot (for the second time in as many months) in a ceremony at Affleck’s home in Riceboro, Georgia. The bride, the groom, and the guests who attended the weekend-long celebration all wore white. Lopez was Affleck’s second wife. Affleck is Lopez’s fourth husband.
2022 - Darya Dugina, daughter of Russian political philosopher Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car bombing in Moscow. Dugina was a journalist and vocal supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Dugin was described as “Putin’s brain” and as the ideological architect of the invasion of Ukraine.
2023 - In the FIFA Women’s World Cup Final (played in Stadium Australia, Sydney), Spanish captain Olga Carmona scored the only goal of the game as Spain’s national football team beat England 1-0. It was the first time in the World Cup finals for both teams.
2023 - In Russia’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years, the unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon after spinning out of control. The craft was meant to be the first ever to land on the Moon’s south pole, but the mission didn’t quite achieve that goal.
2023 - Hurricane Hilary weakened as it made landfall along Mexico’s Baja California coast, where at least one person died. The storm then headed for California, impacting air travel, with thousands of flights delayed or canceled across the West Coast.
and more...
Birthdays on This Day August 20
1778 - Bernardo O’Higgins
leader of Chile: ‘Liberator of Chile’; died Oct 24, 18421833 - Benjamin Harrison
23rd U.S. President [1889-1893]; married to C. Scott, M. Dimmick [one son, two daughter]; nickname: Kid Gloves Harrison; grandson of 9th U.S. President, William Henry Harrison; died Mar 13, 19011881 - Edgar Guest
writer: syndicated columnist; poet; died Aug 5, 19591890 - H.P.(Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
author: horror stories, science fiction: The Color Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, The Thing on the Doorstep, Call of Cthulhu; died Mar 15, 19371905 - Jack Teagarden
musician: trombone; singer, songwriter: Son of the Sun, A Hundred Years From Today, She’s a Great, Great Girl, I Swung the Election, The Blues; died Jan 15, 19641908 - Al López (Alfonso Ramón López)
Baseball Hall of Famer: Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cleveland Indians; manager: Cleveland, Chicago White Sox; died Oct 30, 20051918 - Jacqueline Susann
author: The Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine; died Sep 21, 19741923 - Jim (James Travis) Reeves
singer: singer: Mexican Joe, Bimbo, Yonder Comes a Sucker, Am I Losing You, I’m Getting Better, Losing Your Love, Adios Amigo, I’m Gonna Change Everything, Welcome to My World, Billy Bayou, He’ll Have to Go, I Guess I’m Crazy, Four Walls; killed in plane crash near Nashville July 31, 1964; elected posthumously to the Country Hall of Fame in 1967
1924 - Joya Sherrill
singer: Long, Strong and Consecutive, I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart; died Jun 28, 20101926 - Frank Rosolino
musician: trombone: with Stan Kenton, Harold Land, Bob Cooper, Clarke-Boland Big Band; died Nov 26, 19781931 - Frank Capp
musician: drums: big jazz band: Capp-Pierce Juggernaut; died Sep 12, 20171931 - Don King
heavyweight boxing promoter: Muhammud Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson1931 - Paul Robi
singer: group: The Platters: The Great Pretender, My Prayer, Twilight Time, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Only You; died Feb 1, 19891932 - Anthony Ainley
actor: Doctor Who [TV series], Destiny of the Doctors, Lillie, Nicholas Nickleby, The Land That Time Forgot, Anne of Avonlea, Hassan, Satan’s Skin; died May 3, 20041935 - Ron Paul
member U.S. House of Representatives from Texas [1976–1977, 1979–1985, 1997-2013]; 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. president; Republican U.S. presidential hopeful [2008, 2012]1935 - Justin Tubb
singer: Looking Back to See, Sure Fire Kisses; songwriter: Lonesome 7-7203, Love is No Excuse, Keeping Up with the Joneses; Ernest Tubb’s son; died Jan 24, 19981936 - Sam Melville
actor: The Rookies, Roughnecks, Twice Dead; died Mar 9, 19891942 - Isaac Hayes
Grammy and Academy Award-winning singer, song-writer: Theme from Shaft [1970]; score: Shaft; w/David Porter: Soul Man, Hold on I’m Coming; actor: Tough Guys, Truck Turner; died Aug 10, 20081942 - Anthony Earl Numkena
actor: Wagon Train: A Man Called Horse, Brave Eagle, Alaska Seas, Westward Ho the Wagons, Escape to Burma, Strange Lady in Town, Destination Gobi, Pony Soldier; registered radiologic technologist and diagnostic medical sonographer1943 - Sylvester McCoy
actor: played the seventh Doctor Who [1987-1989]; The Hobbit, Beyond Fear, The Five[ish] Doctors Reboot1944 - Shri Rajiv Gandhi
India’s Prime Minister [1989-1991]; assassinated May 21, 19911944 - Graig Nettles
baseball: Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians, NY Yankees [World Series: 1976, 1977, 1978, 1981/all-star: 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980], SD Padres [World Series: 1984/all-star: 1985], Atlanta Braves, Montreal Expos1946 - Connie Chung (Yu-Hwa)
journalist: CBS Evening News, Saturday Night with Connie Chung, Eye to Eye, CNN: Connie Chung Tonight1947 - Jim Pankow
trombonist, song writer; group: Chicago: Make Me Smile, Colour My World1947 - Ray Wise
actor: Twin Peaks, RoboCop, Reaper, 24, The Chase, The Battle of Shaker Heights, Jeepers Creepers 2, Dead End, The Flock, One Missed Call, X-Men: First Class, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie1948 - Robert Plant
singer: group: Honeydrippers: Big Log, Sea of Love, Rockin’ at Midnight; Led Zeppelin: Stairway to Heaven, Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, D’yer Mak’er, Fool in the Rain; solo: Little Sister1948 - Tom Banks
football: Auburn Univ., SL Cardinals1948 - John Noble
actor: Fringe, All Saints, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, 24, Risen, The Last Airbender, Home and Away, Pirate Islands: The Lost Treasure of Fiji1949 - Philip Parris Lynott
musician: bass,singer: [w/Gary Moore]: Parisienne Walkways, Out in the Fields; group: Thin Lizzy: Whiskey in the Jar, The Rocker, Little Girl in Bloom, Still in Love with You, Killer on the Loose; solo: Sarah, Yellow Pearl, Nineteen; died Jan 4, 19861950 - Jerome ‘Bigfoot’ Brailey
musician: drums: group: Parliament-Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove, Atomic Dog, Flashlight, Maggot Brain1952 - Doug Fieger
musician: guitar, singer: group: The Knack: My Sharona, Good Girls Don’t, Baby Talks Dirty; died Feb 14, 20101952 - Rudy Gatlin
singer: group: The Gatlin Brothers: Night Time Magic, I’ve Done Enough Dyin’ Today, All the Gold in California1953 - Peter Horton
actor: Thirtysomething, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers1954 - Quinn Buckner
basketball: Indiana University; NBA: Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, Indiana Pacers; one of only three players in history to have won titles at every level: high school, college, NBA, Olympics [Magic Johnson and Jerry Lucas are the others]1954 - Al Roker
TV weatherman: Today; TV game-show host: Celebrity Family Feud1956 - Joan Allen
actress: Nixon, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Peggy Sue Got Married, Manhunter, All My Sons1956 - Ric Olsen
musician: guitar: group: Berlin: Take My Breath Away, Blowin’ Sky High, No More Words, Like Flames, Now It’s My Turn, Masquerade, You Don’t Know1958 - David O. Russell
film director: American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook, I Heart Huckabees, Joy1960 - Phyllis Lyons
actress: Sorority Boys, I’m Losing You, The Rat Pack, If These Walls Could Talk, The Bridges of Madison County1962 - Sophie Aldred
actress: Doctor Who, Mindgame Trilogy, Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans, The Zero Imperative, More Than a Messiah1962 - Geoffrey Blake
actor: The Last Starfighter, Young Guns, Critters 3, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Mighty Joe Young, Cast Away1962 - James Marsters
actor: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Smallville, Torchwood, Caprica, P.S. I Love You, Dragonball Evolution1966 - Colin Cunningham
actor: Falling Skies, Stargate SG-1, Da Vinci’s Inquest, Da Vinci’s City Hall, Lesser Evil, jPod, Goblin1967 - Andy Benes
baseball [pitcher]: San Diego Padres, Seattle Marines, St. Louis Cardinals, Arizona Diamondbacks1969 - Billy Gardell
actor: Bob Hearts Abishola, Mike & Molly, My Name Is Earl, Sullivan & Son, Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas [voice]; more1970 - Fred Durst
singer: group: Limp Bizkit: Counterfeit, Sour, Faith, Nookie, Re-Arranged, N 2 Gether Now, Break Stuff, Crushed1971 - Bernard Whittington
football [defensive tackle]: Univ of Indiana; NFL: Indianapolis Colts, Cincinnati Bengals1973 - Todd Helton
baseball [first base]: Univ of Tennessee; Colorado Rockies1974 - Amy Adams
actress: Enchanted, Junebug, Catch Me If You Can, Doubt, Sunshine Cleaning, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Julie & Julia, Leap Year, The Fighter, The Muppets1974 - Misha Collins
actor: Supernatural, Girl, Interrupted, 24, ER, Stonehenge Apocalypse, Divine: The [Web] Series1976 - Gene Kingsale
baseball [center field]: Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres, Detroit Tigers1977 - Barbara Summer
actress [2002-2011]: X-rated films: Round and Ready to Pound, Blacks and Blondes: The Movie, Mad Sex Party: Summer of Love, Gangbangers Ball1978 - Noah Bean
actor: Nikita, Damages, The Pill, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Ed, Joan of Arcadia, Numb3rs, Crumbs, Williamstowne, Stay1979 - D. Snoop
actor [2005-2012]: X-rated films: Runnin a Train on Big Mama, Cherokee’s Off the Chain, Little Red Rides the Hood, Smash or Pass: Interracial Amateurs, Revenge Cuckold, Chocolate Frosted Faces1981 - Ben Barnes
actor: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Dorian Gray, The Words, The Big Wedding, Sons of Liberty, Westworld1982 - Meghan Ory
actress: Once Upon a Time, Higher Ground, Vampire High, Blonde and Blonder, Dark House, True Justice, Supernatural, Intelligence1983 - Andrew Garfield
actor: Broadway: Death of a Salesman [2012 revival]; films: The Amazing Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Social Network, Never Let Me Go1992 - Demi Lovato
actress: Barney & Friends, Camp Rock, Sonny with a Chance, Princess Protection Program; singer: LPs: Don’t Forget, Here We Go Again, Unbroken; more1995 - Liana Liberato
actress: The Last Sin Eater, Scream VI, Hidden Exposure, Hush, Hush, Light as a Feather, Criminal Minds: Evolution
and still more...
Hit Music on This Day August 20
1950Mona Lisa (facts) - Nat King Cole
I Wanna Be Loved (facts) - The Andrews Sisters
1959
1968
1977
1986
1995
2004
2013
2022
and even more...
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end...
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