December 9
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Events on This Day
1788 - George Washington sold his racehorse, Magnolia, to Colonel Henry Lee. Washington reportedly got 5,000 acres of Kentucky farmland in the trade.1793 - The first daily newspaper in New York City was founded by Noah Webster. The American Minerva was published for the first time this day. (Minerva was the ancient Roman goddess of wisdom and the arts, identified with the Greek goddess Athena.)
1884 - Levant Richardson of Chicago, IL received his patent for the ball-bearing roller skate. His teeth chattered all the way to the post office box, downtown. The pavement was kind of rough on those early skates...
1907 - The U.S. Post Office in Wilmington, Delaware offered Christmas Seals for sale for the very first time. Contributions for the original seals, designed by Emily P. Bissell, helped in the fight against tuberculosis. A hospital in Wilmington is named in honor of Bissell.
1926 - The U.S. Golf Association legalized steel-shaft golf clubs. Many of the new clubs are still wrapped around tree trunks, put there by angry golfers who couldn’t make them work any better than the clubs made with hickory sticks.
1934 - Because of ground conditions, the New York Giants football team preferred to wear basketball sneakers, as they defeated the Chicago Bears, 30-13, for the NFL championship.
1940 - The Longines Watch Company signed for the first FM radio advertising contract -- with experimental station W2XOR in New York City. The ads ran for 26 weeks and promoted the Longines time signals.
1948 - The U.N. General Assembly unanimously approved the Convention on Genocide, designed to prevent and punish the crime of genocide.
1953 - Frank Sinatra recorded Young at Heart. The song was turned down by Nat ‘King’ Cole and other artists, believe it or not. It became a top hit in the U.S. in March of 1954.
1958 - The John Birch Society was founded in the U.S. by Robert Welch. The society’s mission was to fight Communism.
1960 - Sperry Rand Corporation of St. Paul, MN unveiled a new computer, known as Univac 1107. The electronic wizard employed what was known as thin-film memory.
1965 - The Peanuts gang made its TV debut this day. A Charlie Brown Christmas ran for the first time on CBS.
1967 - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s daughter Lynda married Charles Robb (later to become a Virginia governor and senator). Pianist Peter Duchin played for the ceremony. It was the first wedding at the White House since 1914.
1967 - The Cunard liner Queen Mary docked at Long Beach, California, after her final voyage. The Queen Mary then underwent a massive, three-year retrofit to become a luxury hotel. It opened to the public on May 8, 1971.
1972 - Keith Moon, Rod Stewart and Roger Daltrey opened the rock opera Tommy in london. The show featuring Tommy, Pinball Wizard and other tunes, was so hot that tickets sold for $50 and up.
1979 - Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the religious broadcaster, died in New York City at age 84.
1984 - The Jackson’s Victory Tour came to a close at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles after 55 performances in 19 cities. The production was reported to be the world’s greatest rock extravaganza and one of the most problematic. The Jackson brothers received about $50 million during the five-month tour of the U.S. -- before some 2.5 million fans.
1984 - Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears got another first as he ran six plays as quarterback. He was intercepted twice, but ran the ball himself on four carries. It didn’t help. The Green Bay packers still won, 20-14. Payton said after the game, “It was okay, but I wouldn’t want to do it for a living.”
1984 - Eric Dickerson, then of the Los Angeles Rams, became only the second pro football player to run for more than 2,000 yards (2,105) in a season. He passed O.J. Simpson’s record of 2,003 as the Rams beat the Houston Oilers, 27-16.
1987 - The first riots of the intifada erupted as Palestinian Arabs protested Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
1987 - Microsoft Windows 2.0 was shipped on this day. The operating system used overlapping, instead of tiled, windows.
1990 - Solidarity founder Lech Walesa won Poland’s presidential runoff by a landslide. Walesa was Poland’s first democratically elected President, winning more than 74 percent of the votes cast.
1992 - Britain’s Prime Minister John Major announced in parliament the separation of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. (The couple’s divorce became final Aug. 28, 1996.)
1992 - Americans watched live TV coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia as Operation Restore Hope began.
1995 - The Beatles’ Anthology 1 was #1 in the U.S. The double CD contained 60 Beatles songs and was the their sixteenth number-one album. It also set a record for the longest time span for a run of number-one albums: 31 years and 10 months between Meet the Beatles and Anthology 1.
1996 - The FBI launched a new strategy in its investigation of the July 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing. The agency offered a $500,000 reward and released the tape of the 911 call that warned of the bomb.
1998 - CBS Corp. raised $2.9 billion by selling a 17 percent stake in Infinity Broadcasting Corp., its radio and outdoor advertising business. The initial public offering of stock is largest ever in the media industry.
2000 - In a sudden and devastating blow to Vice President Al Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop the recount going on in Florida. The court also scheduled a hearing for arguments on George Bush’s appeal of the Florida Supreme Court ruling.
2000 - Florida State University quarterback Chris Weinke won the Heisman Trophy.
2001 - The U.S. revealed the existence of a videotape in which Osama bin Laden said he was pleasantly surprised by the extent of damage in the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks.
2002 - United Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after reporting losses of $20-million a day.
2003 - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited with U.S. President George Bush (II) for talks on Taiwan, trade and other issues.
2003 - Paul Simon, Illinois U.S. Senator from 1984 to 1997, died in Springfield. His work included thirteen published books.
2003 - The owners of a Rhode Island nightclub and the tour manager for a heavy metal band were indicted on charges related to the February 2003 fire that killed 100 people. (The owners were sentenced Sep 29, 2006 after pleading no contest to charges of involuntary manslaughter.)
2004 - Canada’s highest court said the government can redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, but it added that religious officials cannot be forced to perform unions against their beliefs.
2004 - The French government sold an 18.4 percent stake in Air France-KLM, the world’s largest airline, to help reduce the state debt.
2005 - Opening in U.S. theatres: The Western drama Brokeback Mountain, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid, Michelle Williams, Scott Michael Campbell and Anna Farris; and the action fantasy The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, featuring Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Anna Popplewell, William Moseley, Jim Broadbent, Tilda Swinton, Rupert Everett, James McAvoy, James Cosmo, Dawn French, Kiran Shah, Judy McIntosh, Elizabeth Hawthorne, Patrick Kake, Shane Rangi and Ray Winstone.
2005 - Viacom’s Paramount Pictures agreed to buy Dreamworks SKG -- the company founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen -- for $1.6 billion in cash and debt.
2006 - Martin Nodell, creator of comic book superhero The Green Lantern, died in Wisconsin at 91 years of age. The Green Lantern originated in July 1940. Nodell drew the strip until 1947 under the name Mart Dellon.
2006 - German police found traces of radiation in two buildings linked to Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun, who met the murdered (by radiation poisoning) ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in London on the day Litvinenko fell ill.
2007 - Voters in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska cast ballots to choose a new president, as the country took steps towards European integration. (Rajko Kuzmanovic won the election.)
2008 - U.S. Feds arrested Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on charges that he conspired to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
2008 - Hong Kong annouced the planned slaughter of 80,000 chickens after bird flu was found on a poultry farm.
2008 - Discount giant Wal-Mart said it would pay up to $54.25 million to settle a Minnesota class-action lawsuit that alleged the chain cut workers’ break time and did not prevent employees from working off the clock.
2009 - American stage, screen and TV actor Gene Barry died at 90 years of age. Barry played Bat Masterson in the NBC-TV series from 1958-1961, starred in Burke’s Law (1963-1965 and 1993-1994), played a publishing tycoon in The Name of the Game (1968-1971), and was a government agent in the British series The Adventurer in 1972-1973.
2009 - Germany’s Volkswagen announced that it has agreed to pay $2.5 billion for a 19.9% stake in Suzuki, the family-owned Japanese maker of small cars and motorcycles.
2010 - Heavy British police presence held off angry student protesters marching to London’s Parliament Square as lawmakers debated a controversial plan to triple university tuition fees in England. The protesters attacked a Rolls Royce carrying Prince Charles and wife Camilla Parker-Bowles, as they drove through London’s West End. The couple was not hurt.
2011 - New movies in U.S. theatres: I Melt with You, starring Carla Gugino, Sasha Grey, Arielle Kebbel, Rob Lowe, Jeremy Piven and Thomas Jane; In Darkness, with Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Fürmann, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Schrader, Herbert Knaup, Marcin Bosak and Krzysztof Skonieczny; Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl, starring Parineeta Chopra, Aditi Sharma, Anushka Sharma, Dippanita Sharma and Shireesh Sharma; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones and Mark Strong; Young Adult, with Charlize Theron, Elizabeth Reaser, Patrick Wilson, Patton Oswalt, J.K. Simmons and Emily Meade; W.E., featuring Abbie Cornish, Natalie Dormer, Katie McGrath, Oscar Isaac, Andrea Riseborough and James D’Arcy; and We Need to Talk About Kevin, with Tilda Swinton , John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Siobhan Fallon, Ursula Parker andJasper Newell.
2011 - 26-year-old madman Tyler Brehm was shot and killed in Los Angeles after he walked down the middle of Sunset Boulevard firing on motorists with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson gun. 40-year-old music executive John Atterberry died Dec 12 from wounds suffered in Brehm’s attack.
2012 - Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera and four others were killed when her Learjet crashed near Iturbide, Nuevo Leon, México. Rivera sold some 20 million albums worldwide.
2013 - Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird announced his country’s intention to claim the North Pole and surrounding Arctic waters. Officials also reported that they were filing a U.N. application to vastly expand Canada’s Atlantic sea boundary.
2014 - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was awarded China’s Confucius Peace Prize, portrayed by organizers as an alternative to the Nobel Prize. The Global Times newspaper said Castro, 88, was selected for the prize because he did not use force while dealing with international disputes, especially against the U.S.
2014 - A joint report from the Save the Elephants and the Aspinall Foundation said street prices for illegal ivory were soaring in China. Newly wealthy middle and upper class citizens were buying carved ivory and whole tusks as a status symbol of their riches.
2015 - The U.S. announced plans to double grant funding to help developing countries adapt to climate change -- to around $860 million a year.
2015 - China’s government said it would pay bonuses to companies meeting coal efficiency standards, while Beijing residents stayed indoors, schools were closed and limits were enforced on cars, factories and construction sites. All this, as the Chinese capital city endured the second of three days of restrictions triggered by the city’s first red alert for smog.
2016 - Movies opening in the U.S. included: Office Christmas Party, starring Kate McKinnon, Olivia Munn, Jamie Chung, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Abbey Lee, T.J. Miller, Vanessa Bayer, Jillian Bell, Courtney B. Vance, Karan Soni and Rob Corddry; Nocturnal Animals, starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber and Armie Hammer; Abattoir, with Jessica Lowndes, Joe Anderson and Dayton Callie; All We Had, starring Eve Lindley, Richard Kind and Mark Consuelos; Burn Country, with James Franco, Rachel Brosnahan and Melissa Leo; Contract to Kill, starring Steven Seagal, Russell Wong and Jemma Dallender; Frank & Lola, starring Imogen Poots, Michael Shannon and Justin Long; Friend Request, with Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Moseley and Connor Paolo; and Sugar Mountain, starring Jason Momoa, Cary Elwes and Anna Hutchison.
2016 - A senior U.S. official said the CIA had concluded that Russia did intervene in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House -- not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.
2016 - Back-to-back storms slammed much of the U.S. with heavy snow, high winds and freezing rain. At least 15 people were injured in a massive chain-reaction crash near Erie, Pennsylvania that left Interstate 90 blocked for hours.
2017 - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that Iraqi forces had driven the last remnants of Islamic State from the country. This, three years after the militant group had captured about a third of Iraq’s territory.
2017 - Meeting in Oslo, Norway, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), called on the U.S. and North Korea to reduce tensions and end the “urgent threat” posed by weapons of mass destruction.
2018 - Gerald Cotton, the 30-year-old CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, died of complications from Crohn’s disease while traveling to an orphanage in India. Up to C$250 million (US$190 million) owed to 115,000 customers was missing -- or could not be accessed because only Cotten held the password to off-line cold wallets. According to Chainalysis, a cryptocurrency tracking firm, Quadriga likely never invested the funds entrusted to it. Either the funds were never received or quickly went missing. “What Quadriga really did with the money that customers gave it to buy Bitcoin remains a mystery.”
2019 - The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russian athletes from competing in the Olympics and other major sporting events -- for four years -- after it found that Russia had been tampering with key doping test data. WADA banned Russia from hosting or participating in any major sporting events for a four-year period.
2019 - The Justice Department’s internal watchdog declared that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia -- and did not act with political bias. The report rejected theories and criticism that had been spread by Trump and his supporters, though it also found “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command.
2019 - The U.S. said it would not back a proposal to allow the World Trade Organization’s top court to continue. The Trump administration had blocked appointments to the WTO's seven-member Appellate Body that rules on trade disputes for over two years, with U.S. officials saying the court had gone beyond its authority. Since it took office, the Trump administration had systematically blocked the naming of any new judges and no new justices had replaced those whose terms expired. The wheels of trade justice were grinding to a halt, with essentially no way to ultimately resolve big trade disputes like the yearslong battle between Airbus and Boeing.
2020 - French media company Canal+ prevailed over European Union competition regulators in its challenge to a settlement agreement that had prevented companies from blocking content based on where that content was being viewed. The European Court of Justice sided with Canal+ -- a Paris-based premium TV provider -- which had been fighting a 2016 antitrust deal between the European Commission and U.S. film studio Paramount. The argument was about so-called geo-blocking practices (where pay-TV broadcasters in one European country stop consumers in another EU country from accessing their products), claiming geo-blockin violated the principle of a single digital market across Europe. The ruling was the second win at the court for the French media conglomerate Vivendi, which owns Canal+, as well as Universal Music Group and Dailymotion. In September, the Court of Justice ruled Vivendi could purchase a 28.8% stake in Italian media company Mediaset. The Italian telecommunications regulator had blocked the deal, claiming it violated national rules over media ownership.
2020 - The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) -- and 46 states -- accused Facebook of illegally stifling competition by buying up rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp. Prosecutors called for Facebook to sell those services — and for restrictions on future deals.
2020 - The speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Richard Hinch (71), died suddenly of Covid-19. Hinch had attended an indoor meeting with his Republican colleagues where several members contracted the virus. And Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded tougher curbs to halt coronavirus infections, as the German death toll reached a daily record of nearly 600 people.
2020 - Turkey decided against buying the Russian coronavirus vaccine because, as Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said, the Russian vaccine did not meet “good laboratory practice” conditions.
2021 - A Chicago jury found actor Jussie Smollett guilty of falsely reporting to the police that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic assault in 2019. Investigators concluded the ‘attack’ was a hoax directed by Smollett himself.
2021 - A judge in Texas ruled that a law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks violated the state’s constitution because it allowed private citizens to sue abortion providers.
2021 - Movies scheduled to open in the U.S. included: Father Stu, starring Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson and Jacki Weaver; The Whale, with Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink and Ty Simpkins; and Spoiler Alert, starring Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge, Josh Pais and Allegra Heart.
2022 - Nicholas Ochs, founder of the Hawaii chapter of the far-right, white nationalist group the Proud Boys, was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Ochs, 36, was charged with illegally breaching the Capitol while throwing smoke bombs at police. This, in addition to filming himself smoking a cigarette inside the building. 32-year-old Nicholas DeCarlo was also sentenced to four years behind bars for similar offenses.
2022 - J. Alexander Kueng, the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s back while another officer knelt on the Black man’s neck was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for manslaughter. (Kueng had pleaded guilty in October to a state count of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. In exchange, a charge of aiding and abetting murder had been dropped.) Kueng was one of four officers involved in the arrest, filmed by bystanders, of 46-year-old Floyd who died while lying prone and handcuffed.
2023 - Japanese two-way (can pitch and hit well) baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani signed a North American pro-sports record 10-year, $700m deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
2023 - The 89th Heisman Trophy was awarded to quarterback Jayden Daniels of LSU. Daniels was the first player since 2016 to win the Heisman as part of a team that did not play for a conference championship.
2023 - Liz Magill resigned as president of the University of Pennsylvania. She quit four days after bipartisan backlash of a congressional hearing on the issue of punishment for antisemitism rhetoric at Ivy League schools. During the hearing, Magill appeared to dodge the question of whether students who call for the genocide of Jews should face punishment. Her resignation also came at a time of growing anger over her handling of protests on Penn’s campus.
and more...
Birthdays on This Day December 9
1561 - Sir Edwin Sandys
English statesman: treasurer: Virginia Company; colonist: one of the founders of the Virginia Colony [United States]; Sandys Parish in Bermuda named for him; died in Oct 16291608 - John Milton
poet: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes; civil rights activist; died Nov 8, 16741848 - Joel Chandler Harris
author: Uncle Remus stories; died Jul 3, 19081886 - Clarence Birdseye
inventor: process to deep-freeze foods; one of the founders of General Foods Corp.; died Oct 7, 19561897 - Hermione Gingold
actress: Broadway: John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, A Little Night Music; films: Gigi, Bell, Book and Candle, The Music Man, A Little Night Music; died May 24, 19871898 - Emmett Kelly
clown: Ringling Bros.: hobo, Weary Willie; died Mar 28, 19791902 - Margaret Hamilton
actress: The Wizard of Oz, The Anderson Tapes, Brewster McCloud; Maxwell House commercials; died May 16, 19851906 - Grace Hopper
computer developer: COBOL programming language; U.S. Naval officer: Rear Admiral, oldest naval officer on active duty [retired at age 79]; died Jan 1, 19921906 - Freddy Martin
‘Mr. Silvertone’: musician: tenor sax; bandleader: I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts, April in Portugal, I Saw Stars, Then I’ll Be Tired of You, Isle of Capri, Piano Concerto in B Flat, Tonight We Love, Bumble Boogie, Sabre Dance Boogie, Warsaw Concerto, Rose O’Day, Miss You; died Sep 30. 19831909 - Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
actor: Ghost Story, Gunga Din, The Prisoner of Zenda, Accused, Catherine the Great, Scarlet Dawn; TV host: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Presents; died May 7, 20001911 - Broderick Crawford
actor: Ransom Money, Dark Forces, The Oscar, Last of the Comanches, Born Yesterday, All the King’s Men, Highway Patrol, King of Diamonds, The Interns; died Apr 26, 19861912 - Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neil
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives [1977-1987], Massachusetts Democratic congressman; died Jan 5, 19941914 - Frances Reid
actress: Days of Our Lives, One Stormy Night, The Affair, Mercy or Murder?, Man-Proof, The Eleventh Hour, Little Mister, Wagon Train; Broadway: Hamlet, Cyrano de Bergerac, Twelfth Night; died Feb 3, 20101916 - Kirk Douglas
actor: Greedy, The Secret, Oscar, Queenie, Tough Guys, The Final Countdown, The Chosen, A Gunfight, There was a Crooked Man, The Arrangement, The Brotherhood, In Harm’s Way, Seven Days in May, Spartacus, Lonely are the Brave, Paths of Glory, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Lust for Life, Ulysses, Young Man with a Horn, Champion, The Bad and the Beautiful; father of actor Mike Douglas; died Feb 5, 20201922 - Redd Foxx (John Elroy Sanford)
actor, comedian: Sanford and Son, The Royal Family, Redd Foxx, The Redd Foxx Show, Harlem Nights, Norman, Is that You?, Cotton Comes to Harlem; died Oct 11, 19911928 - Dick Van Patten
actor: Eight is Enough, When Things Were Rotten, WIOU, The Partners, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Mama, A Dangerous Place, Spaceballs, Westworld, Superdad, Son of Blob; died Jun 23, 20151929 - John Cassavetes
actor: Edge of the City, The Dirty Dozen, Rosemary’s Baby, Johnny Staccato; director: Big Trouble, Love Streams, Gloria, Opening Night, Faces, Shadows; died Feb 3, 19891929 - Bob Hawke
Prime Minister of Australia [1983-1991]; died May 16, 20191930 - Buck Henry
actor: Short Cuts, Grumpy Old Men, Eating Raoul, Catch-22, The Graduate; Emmy Award-winning writer: Ship of Spies, Get Smart [1966-67]; That was the Week That Was, To Die For, The Day of the Dolphin, What’s Up, Doc?, The Owl and the Pussycat, Catch-22, The Graduate; entertainer: The Steve Allen Show, The New Show; died Jan 8, 20201931 - Cliff Hagan
Basketball Hall of Famer [forward]: St. Louis Hawks [NBA], Dallas Chaparrals [ABA: player-coach]; career: one NBA Championship, scored 13,447 points, avaraged 18.0 points per game average1932 - Donald Byrd
composer, musician: trumpet, flugelhorn: Change [Makes You Wanna Hustle], You and Music, Blackbyrd, Think Twice, Onward ’Til Morning, Lanasana’s Priestess; died Feb 4, 20131933 - Morton Downey Jr
talk show host: The Morton Downey, Jr. Show; actor: The Silencer, Revenge of the Nerds 3: The Next Generation, Driving Me Crazy, Predator 2; died Mar 12, 20011933 - Orville Moody
golf champ: U.S. Open [1969]; died Aug 8, 20081934 - Judi Dench
Academy Award-winning actress [Shakespeare in Love (1999)]; The Corrections, Casino Royale, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Pride and Prejudice, The Chronicles of Riddick, Die Another Day, Mrs. Brown, Chocolat, Iris, Skyfall1934 - Junior Wells
‘Godfather of the Blues’: musician: harmonica: Hoodoo Man Blues, Messin’ with the Kid, Little By Little, Broke and Hungry, What My Mama Told Me; died Jan 15, 19981938 - David Houston
Grammy Award-winning singer: Almost Persuaded [1966]; Mountain of Love, Livin’ in a House Full of Love, With One Exception, You Mean the World to Me, Have a Little Faith, Already It’s Heaven, Baby Baby [I Know You’re a Lady], So Many Ways; actor: Carnival Rock, Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers; died Nov 30, 19931938 - Deacon Jones
Pro Football Hall of Famer: LA Rams: coined the term ‘sack’ of which he was premier at the time; NFL defensive player of the year [1967, 1968]; San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins; died Jun 3, 20131941 - Beau Bridges
director, Emmy Award-winning actor: Without Warning: The James Brady Story [1991-92]; The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom [1992-93]; Harts of the West, Ensign O’Toole; The Fabulous Baker Boys, Married to It, Sidekicks, The Hotel New Hampshire, Norma Rae, Two Minute Warning, The Other Side of the Mountain, For Love of Ivy, The Red Pony, Sea Hunt; son of actor Lloyd Bridges, brother of actor Jeff Bridges1942 - Dick Butkus
College and Pro Football Hall of Famer: Chicago Bears: middle linebacker: NFL Defensive Player of the Year [1969, 1970]; actor: Rich Man, Poor Man, Half Nelson1943 - Jim Merritt
baseball: pitcher: Minnesota Twins [World Series: 1965], Cincinnati Reds [World Series: 1970/all-star: 1970], Texas Rangers1944 - Shirley Brickley
singer: group: The Orlons: The Wah-Watusi, Mashed Potato Time, Gravy [For My Mashed Potatoes], South Street, Don’t Hang Up; died Oct 13, 19771944 - Neil Innes
musician: keyboard, singer, songwriter: group: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: I’m the Urban Spaceman1945 - Michael Nouri
actor: To the Limit, Danielle Steele’s Changes, The Hidden, Flashdance, Gangster Wars, Love & War, The Gangster Chronicles, Downtown, The Curse of Dracula, The Bay City Blues, Beacon Hill, NCIS1946 - Dennis Dunaway
musician: bass guitar: founding memeber of Alice Cooper: I'm Eighteen, Is It My Body, Desperado, Under My Wheels, Be My Lover, School’s Out; The Dennis Dunaway Project: LP: Bones from the Yard; more1947 - Tom Daschle
U.S. Senator [South Dakota 1987-2005]1947 - Steve Owens
football: Heisman Trophy winner: Univ of Oklahoma [1969]1949 - Tom Kite
golf champ: U.S. Open [1992]; PGA Rookie of the Year [1973], Vardon Trophy winner [1989], PGA Player of the Year [1989]1950 - Joan Armatrading
singer, songwriter: Me, Myself, I, Love and Affection, Down to Zero, Water in the Wine, Drop the Pilot1952 - Michael Dorn
actor: Star Trek film series, Shockwave, Heart of the Beholder, Walking on Water, Through the Fire, The Santa Clause 2, The Santa Clause 31953 - John Malkovich
Emmy Award-winning actor: Death of a Salesman [1986]; RED, RED 2, Mulholland Falls, Dangerous Liaisons, True West, The Killing Fields, The Sheltering Sky, Places in the Heart, Of Mice and Men, In the Line of Fire, Empire of the Sun, Being John Malkovich1954 - Jack Hues
singer: group: Wang Chung: Everybody Have Fun Tonight1955 - Otis Birdsong
basketball: guard: Univ. of Houston [Player of the Year: 1977]; Kansas City Kings, New Jersey Nets, Boston Celtics; four-time NBA all-star; scored over 14,000 career points1956 - Sylvia
singer: Nobody, You Don’t Miss a Thing, The Drifter, The Matador, Heart on the Mend, Sweet Yesterday1957 - Donny Osmond
singer: Go Away Little Girl, Puppy Love; [w/sister, Marie]: I’m Leaving It All Up to You; group: Osmond Brothers: One Bad Apple; TV host: Donny and Marie; actor: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; dance champ: Dancing with the Stars [2009]1961 - David Anthony Higgins
actor: Three Blind Mice, Snake Eyes, The Wrong Guy, Payback, Coldblooded, After the Shock, Tapeheads1961 - Joe Lando
actor: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, The Guiding Light, Higher Ground, Seeds of Doubt, No Code of Conduct, The Secret Circle1962 - Felicity Huffman
actress: Desperate Housewives, Transamerica, Christmas with the Kranks, Raising Helen, Path to War, Snap Decision, Magnolia, Harrison: Cry of the City1969 - Jakob Dylan
songwriter, lead singer of rock band The Wallflowers; son of of singer Bob Dylan and Sara Dylan1969 - Lori Greiner
investor, TV personality: Shark Tank, QVC: Clever & Unique Creations Show1970 - Kara DioGuardi
singer, songwriter: collaborated with Christina Aguilera [Back to Basics], Jesse McCartney [Right Where You Want Me], Britney Spears [Blackout], Pink [Sober], Kelly Clarkson [I Do Not Hook Up]; Katharine McPhee [Had It All], Carrie Underwood [Undo It], Theory of a Deadman [Not Meant to Be]1971 - Todd Van Poppel
baseball [pitcher]: Oakland Athletics, Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds1972 - Reiko Aylesworth
actress: 24, BuzzKill, The Understudy, AVPR: Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem, Magma: Volcanic Disaster, Sherman’s March, Random Hearts1973 - Tony Batista
baseball: Oakland Athletics, Arizona Diamondbacks, Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles, Montreal Expos, Washington Nationals1974 - David Akers
football [kicker]: Washington Redskins [1998], Philadelphia Eagles [1999–2010], San Francisco 49ers [2011–2012], Detroit Lions [2013]1974 - Jacqueline Lovell
actress: Femalien, Lolita 2000, Erotic House of Wax, The Killer Eye, Dead Country, Little Manhattan, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, She Hate Me, Lolita 20001976 - Jim Finn
football [fullback]: Univ of Pennsylvania; NFL: Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants1978 - Jesse Metcalfe
actor: Dallas [2012], Desperate Housewives, Passions, John Tucker Must Die, The Tortured, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, The Other End of the Line1980 - Simon Helberg
actor: The Big Bang Theory, MADtv, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Derek & Simon: A Bee and a Cigarette, Van Wilder1984 - Leon Hall
football [cornerback]: Univ of Michigan; NFL: Cinicinatti Bengals1986 - Aron Baynes
basketball [forward/center]: Washington State Univ; NBA: San Antonio Spurs [2013–2015]: 2014 NBA champs; Detroit Pistons [2015–2017]; Boston Celtics [2017–2019]; Phoenix Suns [2019–2020]; Toronto Raptors [2020–2021]1993 - Wyndham Clark
golf champ: 2023 U.S. Open, 2023 Wells Fargo Championship1993 - Mark McMorris
Canadian pro snowboarder: 2014, 2018 Olympic bronze medalist [11 months after a near-fatal snowboarding accident]; 2012, 2013, Winter X Games gold medalist; more1995 - McKayla Rose Maroney
artistic gymnast: 2012 Summer Olympics: vault: team gold medal, silver individual silver medal; member of the 2012 ‘Fierce Five’
and still more...
Hit Music on This Day December 9
1944The Trolley Song (facts) - The Pied Pipers
Dance with the Dolly (facts) - The Russ Morgan Orchestra (vocal: Al Jennings)
1953
1962
1971
1980
1989
1998
2007
2016
and even more...
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end...
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