Events on This Day
1879 - Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta The Pirates of Penzance premiered at the Royal Bijou Theatre in Paignton, England.1927 - The first subway in the Orient was dedicated in Tokyo, Japan. Many people had worried that the ground under Tokyo was too soft for a subway, but their fears proved unfounded as the Tokyo Underground Railway Company opened the first section of the subway between Ueno and Asakusa.
1936 - The famous feud between Jack Benny and Fred Allen was ignited. After a 10-year-old performer finished a violin solo on The Fred Allen Show, Mr. Allen said, “A certain alleged violinist should hide his head in shame for his poor fiddle playing.” It didn’t take long for Mr. Benny to respond. The humorous feud lasted for ten weeks on both comedian’s radio shows.
1940 - The Arroyo Seco Parkway (between Los Angeles and Pasadena) was dedicated by Los Angeles, California Mayor Fletcher Bowron. It was the first freeway in the western U.S. The Pasadena Freeway, as it was known from 1954-2010, was designated as a historic engineering landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1999.
1942 - Mr. and Mrs. North debuted on NBC radio. Joseph Curtin played Jerry North and Alice Frost played Pam. A typical Mr. and Mrs. North episode would find Pam leading Jerry on what seemed to be a wild-goose chase as they tracked down criminals. Pam always ended up being right and leading police to the criminals. The theme song for the show was The Way You Look Tonight. Sponsors included Woodbury soap, Jergens lotion and Halo shampoo.
1942 - Frank Sinatra opened at New York’s Paramount Theatre for what was scheduled to be a 4-week engagement (his shows turned out to be so popular that he was booked for an additional 4 weeks). An estimated 400 policemen were called out to help curb the excitement. It is said that some of the teenage girls were hired to scream, but many more screamed for free. Sinatra was dubbed ‘The Sultan of Swoon’, ‘The Voice that Thrills Millions’, and just ‘The Voice’. Whatever he was, it was at this Paramount Theatre engagement that modern pop hysteria was born.
1948 - Alfred Drake and Patricia Morrison starred in Kiss Me Kate which opened at the New Century Theatre in New York City. Cole Porter composed the music for the classic play that was adapted from Shakespeare’s comedy, The Taming of the Shrew. The show ran for 1,077 performances on the Great White Way.
1953 - The Wild One debuted in New York. The drama stars Marlin Brando as the leader of a tough motorcycle gang who terrorize a small town (Wrightsville -- somewhere in Middle America).
1953 - The first color television sets went on sale. The sets, made by Admiral, sold for $1,135.00. (That would be $12,616.65 in 2023 dollars.)
1954 - Pearl Bailey opened on Broadway in the play, House of Flowers, about two madams with rival bordellos. Diahann Carroll was also cast in the play, written by Truman Capote. Harold Arlen provided the musical score.
1954 - James Arness made his dramatic TV debut on the Lux Video Theatre in The Chase. (The Gunsmoke series didn’t begin for Arness until the fall of 1955.)
1963 - Let’s Make a Deal premiered. The game show was hosted by Monty Hall. “Alright Madge, you can keep the monkey and the motorcycle or trade them for what’s in the big pretty box...”
1967 - Hello, Goodbye, by The Beatles, jumped into the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100. It stayed at #1 for three weeks.
1968 - Trygve Lie died. The Norwegian statesman was the first secretary-general of the United Nations (1946-1952).
1969 - Peter, Paul and Mary received a gold record for the single, Leaving On a Jet Plane. The song had hit #1 on December 20.
1970 - Paul McCartney sued the other three Beatles to dissolve the partnership and gain control of his interest. The suit touched off a bitter feud between McCartney and the others, especially his cowriter on many of the Beatles compositions, John Lennon. The partnership officially came to end in 1974.
1976 - The Smothers Brothers, Tom and Dick, played their last show at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas and retired as a team from show business. Each continued as a solo artist. They reunited years later for another stab at TV (on NBC) plus concert appearances that proved very successful.
1978 - Ohio State University fired its football coach Woody Hayes. The action came one day after Hayes punched Clemson University player Charlie Bauman during the Gator Bowl (Bauman had just intercepted an Ohio State pass).
1980 - The Selective Service System sent a warning to Mickey Mouse at Disneyland in Anaheim, California: Register for the draft or else! The Selective Service said that Mickey was in violation of registration compliance. Of course, Mickey, age 52 at the time, sent in his registration card proving that he’s a World War II veteran.
1982 - An uncommon sight in the sky this night, as a ‘blue moon’ appeared. It was not really a blue moon, but one unobstructed by pollution and haze -- appearing grayish in color. It was the second full moon of the month; a rare event that attracted many sky watchers. Now you know where the expression, “once in a blue moon” came from.
1993 - After some 2,000 years of rocky Jewish-Christian relations, the Holy See and the State of Israel signed an agreement to recognize each other. The agreement was seen as a significant step forward in relations between the Vatican and Israel.
1996 - Actor Lew Ayres (Dr. Kildare, State Fair), died. He was 88 years old.
1997 - China made new rules restricting the use of the Internet. The rules forbade defamation of government agencies, the promotion of separatist movements, and the divulgence of state secrets. Also forbidden was pornography and prowling by hackers.
1997 - Danilo Dolci, advocate of nonviolent social reform, died in Italy at the age of 73. Dolci’s writings and poetry chronicled Sicily’s beauty and despair. His books include Report from Palermo, Waste, and Sicilian Lives.
1998 - Hi-Lo Country (“A woman like Mona can drive men to extremes.”) opened in U.S. theatres. The flick stars Woody Harrelson, Billy Crudup, Patricia Arquette (as Mona), Cole Hauser, James Gammon, Penelope Cruz, Sam Elliott, Enrique Castillo, John Diehl, Darren Burrows and Jacob Vargas.
1999 - Beatle George Harrison was hospitalized after being stabbed in the chest by an intruder who broke into his Oxfordshire mansion in Henley-on-Thames (England). Michael Abram, a mentally ill former heroin addict, was later acquitted of attempted murder by reason of insanity.
2000 - Hollywood screenwriter Julius J. Epstein, who co-wrote the script for Casablanca, died in Los Angeles. He was 91 years old.
2001 - Argentina’s interim president, Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, resigned after seven days in office, complaining that his Peronist party had abandoned him. Plunged into chaos by looting and deadly riots that forced Fernando de la Rua to resign as president a week earlier, Argentina fell deeper into anarchy when interim leader Adolfo Rodriguez Saa quit on Sunday after losing the support of his party.
2001 - The Reverend Jack Brock (and his wife Sharon) of the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, NM burned Harry Potter books after calling them “a masterpiece of satanic deception.”
2002 - China launched the unmanned Shenzhou IV spacecraft in a test launch of its manned space program.
2003 - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the dietary supplement ephedra. Some 16,000 adverse reactions had been reported along with 155 deaths.
2003 - Federal Express agreed to acquire Kinko’s for $2.2 billion.
2004 - The death toll from the Dec 26 earthquake-tsunami rose to more than 114,000. Estimated deaths in Aceh, Indonesia were put at over 80,000.
2004 - Jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw died in Thousand Oaks, CA. He was 94 years old. His eight wives included film stars Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. In 1952 he Shaw authored his autobiography in 1952, The Trouble with Cinderella: An Outline of Identity.
2005 - Tropical Storm Zeta, 27th named storm of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, formed in the Atlantic Ocean. This, one month after the season’s official end.
2006 - A 67-year-old Spanish woman became the world’s oldest mother after she gave birth to twins in Barcelona. She had previously undergone in vitro fertilization in the U.S.
2006 - Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hanged at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah. Hussein was executed for crimes committed during his reign. Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told Iraqi television, “This dark page has been turned over. Saddam is gone. Today Iraq is an Iraq for all the Iraqis, and all the Iraqis are looking forward. ... The [Hussein] era has gone forever.”
2007 - Belgian officials said New Year’s Eve fireworks in central Brussels were canceled because of terror threats in the capital.
2008 - Paleontologists in east China reported that they had dug up what they believe to be the world’s largest group of dinosaur fossils including the remains of an enormous platypus.
2009 - The Netherlands called the failed Christmas Day airline bombing a professional terror attack and announced that it was going to use full body scanners for flights heading to the United States.
2010 - Jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to six addtional years in prison (for embezzlement) following a trial that was seen by critics as payback for his defiance of Vladimir Putin. Khodorkovsky was already serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion from his 2005 trial. The U.S. and Germany were highly critical of the verdict.
2010 - Pope Benedict XVI issued new norms governing the Vatican’s banking system. The new rules placed the Vatican’s bank under a central authority to bring it in line with international measures to curb money-laundering and the financing of terrorism.
2011 - Movies opening in U.S. theatres: Angels Crest, starring Marty Antonini, Mathieu Bourassa, Dave Brown, Lindsay Burns , Colin A. Campbell and Gillian Carfra; A Separation, with Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat and Shahab Hosseini; and The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Anthony Head, Iain Glen, Harry Lloyd and Richard E. Grant.
2011 - At midnight on Dec 29 Samoa jumped to Dec 31 (skipping Dec 30) to align itself with its trading partners. For the country’s 186,000 citizens, Dec 30, 2011 did not happen.
2014 - 29-year-old Veronica Rutledge was killed while shopping at a Walmart in Hayden, Idaho when her two-year-old son pulled a gun from her purse and shot her in the head.
2014 - Actress Luise Rainer died in London -- two weeks shy of her 105th brithday. Rainer won best actress prizes for the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth in 1937. But, a string of unimportant movie parts followed and Rainer became disappointed, leading her to end her brief (3-year) film career, and return to Europe.
2015 - Chinese rescuers in Shandong province used infrared cameras to peer into darkness at a wrecked mine. They found eight surviving miners who had been trapped for five days after the collapse so violent it had registered as a seismic event.
2015 - Missouri Governor Jay Nixon reported that 13 people had been killed after days of downpours from a massive winter storm system. The big blast had triggered the state’s worst flooding in twenty years.
2016 - Hawaii’s last sugar mill shut down after 145 years of state production. Alexander & Baldwin, the parent company of HC&S, said equipment left over from sugar operations would be auctioned off. 200 HC&S employees had found new jobs. In addition, 99 employees retired and 13 relocated away from Maui. All sugar in Hawaii now comes from foreign and domestic cane fields other than those in the state.
2016 - Vermont’s Burlington Electric Department confirmed that it had found the malware code used in Grizzly Steppe on one of its laptops. Grizzly Steppe was a Russian hacking campaign.
2017 - Senior Western European security sources reported Russian tankers had supplied fuel to North Korea via transfers at sea on at least three occasions in recent months. The transfers were a breach U.N. sanctions against North Korea, the security sources said.
2018 - German-Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath died at 92 years of age. He wrote several fictional novels that gave an unvarnished view of the Holocaust and were partly based on his own experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. Hilsenrath’s first novel, Night, recounted the horrors of trying to survive in a Jewish ghetto, was published in 1954. His 1971 novel The Nazi and the Barber, a grotesque story about an SS member who pretended to be Jewish after the war to escape prosecution, sold millions of copies worldwide.
2018 - A Texas driver fired several shots into a car carrying a family, killing 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes and wounding the child’s mother near Houston. A tip later implicated two black men. The shootings appeared to be a case of mistaken identity.
2019 - POTUS Trump signed a bill that increased fines on criminal robocall violations and made it more difficult for the companies making the calls. Congress approved the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act) to give the federal government new abilities to go after illegal robocallers. Fines were upped to a possible $10,000 per call. The law also required major carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc.) to use a new technology called STIR/SHAKEN to help customers know if they’re being targeted by a robocaller with a spoofed number. “I applaud Congress for working in a bipartisan manner to combat illegal robocalls and malicious caller ID spoofing,” Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. Pai added that he was glad the F.C.C. had “a longer statute of limitations” to pursue scammers.
2020 - U.S. jeweler Tiffany & Co’s shareholders approved a $15.8 billion buyout deal by France’s LVMH, ending an acrimonious dispute between the two luxury retailers that had stretched for more than a year.
2020 - The $1.6 billion Moynihan Train Hall, a 255,000-square-foot expansion of New York City’s Penn Station, was opened. The new concourse significantly expanded North America’s busiest train terminal amid a public transit crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020 - The Aurora Medical System in Milwaukee, Wisconsin said that 500 doses of a coronavirus vaccine, that had to be discarded after they were left unrefrigerated, appeared to have been deliberately spoiled by an employee. Licensed pharmacist Steven Brandenburg later said he ruined the vaccines because he believed the shots would mutate people’s DNA. In 2021 Brandenburg was sentenced to three years in prison.
2021 - Wind-driven, fast-moving wildfires swept through suburban areas near Denver, prompting the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in Boulder County, Colorado. 991 homes were destroyed and two people were left missing.
2021 - A New York jury found that the American division of Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli-based company, contributed to the deadly opioid crisis in New York, inundating the state with prescription painkillers that led to thousands of deaths.
2022 - Police arrested a 28-year-old criminology Ph.D. student in eastern Pennsylvania. He was the prime suspect in the deaths of four University of Idaho students who were stabbed to death in November. DNA left on the button of a knife sheath found near one of the victims played a major role in the identification of Christopher Kohberger. The victims — Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin — were good friends, and staying together in a rental home when they were murdered, likely while they were sleeping. The case had initially baffled authorities and shaken the small community of Moscow, which hadn’t had a murder in the five years prior.
2022 - Longtime news anchor and renowned interviewer Barbara Walters died at her home in Manhattan. She was 93 years old. Walters was both the first female co-host of the Today show and the first female anchor of a network evening news program. Her Barbara Walters Specials “made Ms. Walters as famous, or nearly as famous, as the people she interviewed,” The New York Times wrote. In her five-decade career, she accumulated 12 Emmy awards. “In all the years that Barbara has spent covering the world, those of us who have moved along in her wake have done better because she was there first setting standards, and she has taught us all something,” former World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings said during her induction to the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1989.
and more...
Birthdays on This Day December 30
1865 - Rudyard Kipling
novelist, short story author, poet: Nobel Prize for Literature [1907]; The Jungle Book, Captains Courageous, Wee Willie Winkie and other Stories, Gunga Din; died Jan 18, 19361867 - Simon Guggenheim
philanthropist: established the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation providing grants to scientists, scholars, artists; died Nov 2, 19411869 - Stephen Leacock
humorist: Literary Lapses, Nonsense Novels, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town; died Mar 28, 19441873 - Al Smith
former governor of New York, 1928 Democratic Party presidential nominee; died Oct 4, 19441884 - Hideki Tojo
Prime Minister of Japan; WWII war criminal, hanged Dec 22, 19481895 - Vincent Lopez
bandleader: played at NYC’s Astor Hotel, some of the greats started with him: Artie Shaw, Buddy Morrow, Buddy Clark; died Sep 20, 19751911 - Jeannette Nolan
actress: The Horse Whisperer, Oklahoma Passage, Cloak and Dagger, True Confessions, Better Late Than Never, Lassie: A New Beginning; died Jun 5, 19981914 - Bert Parks (Jacobson)
radio/TV host: Miss America Pageant, Break the Bank, Stop the Music; died Feb 2, 19921914 - Jo Van Fleet
Academy Award-winning actress: East of Eden [1955]; The Rose Tattoo, Cool Hand Luke, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Cinderella; died June 10, 19961920 - Jack Lord (John Joseph Patrick Ryan)
actor: Hawaii Five-O, Stoney Burke, God’s Little Acre, Dr. No, The Doomsday Flight; died Jan 21, 1998 [age 77]1928 - Bo Diddley (Otha Ellas Bates McDaniel)
singer: Bo Diddley, I’m a Man, Say Man, Diddey Wah Diddey; died Jun 2, 20081931 - Skeeter Davis (Mary Frances Penick)
singer: I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know, The End of the World, I Can’t Stay Mad at You; died Sep 19, 20041934 - Joseph Bologna
Emmy Award-winning writer: Acts of Love -- And Other Comedies [ABC, 1972-73]; Lovers and Other Strangers; actor: Danger of Love, Revenge of the Nerds 4: Nerds in Love, Citizen Cohn, Blame It on Rio, My Favorite Year, Torn Between Two Lovers, The Big Bus, Honor Thy Father, Cops and Robbers, Top of the Heap, Rags to Riches; died Aug 13, 20171934 - Fred Lorenzen
NASCAR racecar driver: Daytona 500 winner [1965]1934 - Russ Tamblyn
actor: Twin Peaks, Cabin Boy, The Last Movie, How the West was Won, West Side Story, Cimarron, Peyton Place, Don’t Go Near the Water, Hit the Deck, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Father of the Bride, tom thumb1935 - Sandy Koufax
Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher: Brooklyn Dodgers, LA Dodgers: [World Series: 1959, 1963 (MVP), 1965 (MVP), 1966/all-star: 1961-1966/Baseball Writers Award: 1963/Cy Young Award: 1963, 1965, 1966/record: 382 strikeouts: 1965]; broadcaster: NBC1936 - Jack Riley
comedian, actor: The Bob Newhart Show, St. Elsewhere, Barney Miller, Hogan’s Heroes, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, One Day at a Time, Gomer Pyle, Diff’rent Strokes, Night Court, High Anxiety, History of the World: Part I, To Be or Not to Be, The Addams Family Fun-House, The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t (aka The Night Dracula Saved The World), The Wild Wacky Wonderful World of Winter, The Tim Conway Show; voice actor: Rugrats series; died Aug 19, 20161937 - John Hartford
Grammy Award-winning songwriter: Gentle on My Mind [1966]; musician: banjo, fiddle, guitar: Glenn Campbell’s Good Time Comedy Hour; died Jun 4, 20011937 - (Noel) Paul Stookey
singer: The Wedding Song; group: Peter, Paul and Mary: Blowin’ in the Wind, Puff the Magic Dragon, I Dig Rock ’n’ Roll Music, Leavin’ on a Jet Plane1939 - Del Shannon (Charles Westover)
singer: Runaway, Hat’s Off to Larry, Little Town Flirt, Keep Searchin’ [We’ll Follow the Sun]; songwriter: I Go to Pieces; inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [Mar 15, 1999]; died Feb 8, 19901941 - Mel Renfro
College & Pro Football Hall of Famer: Dallas Cowboys defensive back: 10 consecutive Pro Bowl games [1964-1973]; All-Pro [1965, 1967-1969, 1973]1942 - Jim ‘Bo’ Nance
football: Boston Patriots full back: AFL Player of the Year [1966], NY Jets, World Football League: Memphis Southmen; NCAA Heavyweight Wrestling Champion [1963, 1965]; died June 16, 19921942 - Michael Nesmith
guitarist: group: The Monkees; wrote: Different Drum; formed: The First National Band: Joanne; movie producer: Repo Man, Elephant Parts: the first Grammy-winning video; died Dec 10, 20211942 - Fred Ward
actor: Tremors series, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, Short Cuts, Miami Blues, Henry and June, Big Business, Swing Shift, Silkwood, The Right Stuff, Escape from Alcatraz; died May 8, 20221945 - Davy Jones (David Thomas Jones)
singer: group: The Monkees: Last Train to Clarksville, I’m a Believer, Daydream Believer; actor: UK version: Godspell; died Feb 29, 2012; more1945 - Concetta Tomei
actress: Necessary Roughness, China Beach, Providence, Nip/Tuck, Ghost Whisperer, View from the Top, Out to Sea, Madman of the People, Picket Fences, Max Headroom, Judging Amy1946 - Patti Smith
songwriter, singer: Career of Evil, Piss Factory, Because the Night; playwright: Cowboy Mouth1947 - Jeff Lynne
musician: guitar; singer: group: Electric Light Orchestra: Livin’ Thing, Telephone Line, Evil Woman, Hold on Tight, Calling America; songwriter: Mr. Blue Sky, Last Train to London1951 - Chris Jasper
musician: keyboards, moog: group: The Isley Brothers: Shout, Twist and Shout, This Old Heart of Mine, It’s Your Thing1953 - Meredith Vieira
TV host: Today, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The View, 60 Minutes, The CBS Morning News1956 - Suzy Bogguss
musician: guitar, singer: Somewhere Between, Someday Soon, Outbound Plane, Cross My Broken Heart, Letting Go, Heartache, Drive South1956 - Sheryl Lee Ralph
actress: White Man’s Burden, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, The Distinguished Gentleman, The Mighty Quinn, Codename: Foxfire, It’s a Living, George, Designing Women1957 - Matt Lauer
TV host: Today [1997-2017], hosted the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for NBC [1998-2017], co-hosted the opening ceremonies of several Olympic Games; after allegations of his inappropriate sexual behavior towards a colleague, Lauer’s contract was terminated by NBC in November 20171959 - Tracey Ullman
singer: They Don’t Know, Breakaway; actress: Tracy Takes On, Mackenzie, Give My Regards to Broad Street, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Tracey Ullman: A Class Act, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Bullets Over Broadway, The Little Lulu Show, Panic1960 - Kelli Maroney
actress: Ryan’s Hope, Nightmare Carnival, Audition, Sam and Mike, Servants of Twilight, The Zero Boys, Night of the Comet1961 - Sean Hannity
right-wing TV talk show host: FOX News; more1961 - Ben Johnson
track: 100 meter world-record holder [9.79 - 1988]; AP Athlete of the Year [1987]; suspended from track competition for life for steroid use1965 - Heidi Fleiss
‘The Hollywood Madam’: her prositution ring had numerous famous clients; she was jailed for tax evasion, money laundering; author: Pandering, The Player’s Handbook, Sex Tips [DVD]1966 - Bennett Miller
film director: Capote, Moneyball, The Cruise, Foxcatcher1968 - Kevin Dahl
hockey [defense]: Calgary Flames, Phoenix Coyotes, Toronto Maple Leafs, Columbus Blue Jackets1968 - Meredith Monroe
actress: Fathers and Sons, Vampires: The Turning, Shadow Man, The One, Minority Report, The Year That Trembled, Dawson’s Creek, Nowhere to Hide, bgFATLdy1972 - Kerry Collins
football [quarterback]: Carolilna Panthers, New Orleans Saints, New York Giants, Oakland Raiders1973 - Jason Behr
actor: Roswell, The Shipping News, The Grudge, Step by Step, The Profiler, 7th Heaven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, JAG, Dawson’s Creek1973 - Maureen Flannigan
actress: 7th Heaven, Homecoming, Book of Days, At Any Cost, She Fought Alone, Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde1973 - Don Reid
basketball [forward]: Georgetown Univ; NBA: Detroit Pistons, Washington Wizards, Orlando Magic1975 - (Eldrick) Tiger Woods
golf champ: Masters [1997, 2001, 2002], US Open [2000, 2002], British Open [2000], PGA [1999, 2000]; first player to win four consecutive majors (2000-2001: US Open, British Open, PGA, Masters]; youngest player to reach fifty career victories [age 30: Aug 6, 2006]1977 - Grant Balfour
baseball [pitcher]: Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay Rays1977 - Kenyon Martin
basketball [power forward]: Univ of Cincinnati; overall pick of 2000 NBA Draft: New Jersey Nets, Denver Nuggets Los Angeles Clippers1977 - Lucy Punch
actress: Being Julia, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Ella Enchanted, Second Nature, Come Together, Goodbye, Mr Steadman, Hot Fuzz1978 - Tyrese Gibson
singer: LPs: Tyrese, 2000 Watts, I Wanna Go There, Alter Ego, Open Invitation, Black Rose; actor: Baby Boy, The Fast and the Furious film series1980 - Eliza Dushku
actress: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Tru Calling, Dollhouse, Nobel Son, The Kiss, Wrong Turn, The New Guy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Race the Sun, Bye Bye Love, True Lies, Bring It On, Wrong Turn1981 - Haley Paige
actress [2002-2007]: X-rated films: Office Whores Behind Closed Doors, Housewives Need Cash, Naughty Bedtime Stories: Volume 2, Teenage Wasteland; died Aug 21, 20071982 - Kristin Kreuk
actress: Edgemont, Smallville, Beauty and the Beast [TV series], Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Ecstasy1984 - LeBron James
basketball [forward]: NBA: Cleveland Cavaliers [2003–2010]; Miami Heat [2010–2014]: 2012, 2013 NBA champs; Cleveland Cavaliers [2014-2018]: 2016 NBA champs; Los Angeles Lakers [2018– ]; more1986 - Ellie Goulding
singer: Lights, Your Song, Under the Sheets, Starry Eyed, Guns and Horses, The Writer, Anything Could Happen, Figure 8; more1986 - Caity Lotz
martial artist, actress: Death Valley, Arrow, The Pact, Live at the Foxes Den, The Pact 2, Mad Men, Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash1992 - Carson Wentz
football [quarterback]: NFL: Philadelphia Eagles [2016–2020]: 2017 Super Bowl LII champs; Indianapolis Colts [2021]; Washington Commanders [2022– ]1995 - Dominic Fike
singer: Mona Lisa, Elliot’s Song [with Zendaya], Dancing in the Courthouse, Politics & Violence; actor: Euphoria
and still more...
Hit Music on This Day December 30
1947How Soon (facts) - Carroll Lucas and Jack Owens
Civilization (facts) - Louis Prima
Serenade of the Bells (facts) - The Sammy Kaye Orchestra (vocal: Don Cornell)
I’ll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms) (facts) - Eddy Arnold
1956Singing the Blues (facts) - Guy Mitchell
A Rose and a Baby Ruth (facts) - George Hamilton IV
Garden of Eden (facts) - Joe Valino
Singing the Blues (facts) - Marty Robbins
1965Over and Over (facts) - The Dave Clark Five
I Got You (I Feel Good) (facts) - James Brown
The Sounds of Silence (facts) - Simon & Garfunkel
Buckaroo (facts) - Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
1974Angie Baby (facts) - Helen Reddy
Lucie in the Sky with Diamonds (facts) - Elton John
You’re the First, The Last, My Everything (facts) - Barry White
What a Man, My Man Is (facts) - Lynn Anderson
1983Say Say Say (facts) - Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson
Say It Isn’t So (facts) - Daryl Hall-John Oates
Union of the Snake (facts) - Duran Duran
Houston (Means I’m One Day Closer to You) (facts) - Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers
1992I Will Always Love You (facts) - Whitney Houston
Rump Shaker (facts) - Wreckx-N-Effect
In the Still of the Night (I’ll Remember) (facts) - Boyz II Men
Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away (facts) - Vince Gill
2001How You Remind Me (facts) - Nickelback
Get the Party Started (facts) - P!nk
Whenever, Wherever (facts) - Shakira
Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) (facts) - Alan Jackson
2010Firework (facts) - Katy Perry
What’s My Name? (facts) - Rihanna featuring Drake
Grenade (facts) - Bruno Mars
Why Wait (facts) - Rascal Flatts
2019All I Want for Christmas Is You (facts) - Mariah Carey
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (facts) - Brenda Lee
Circles (facts) - Post Malone
10,000 Hours (facts) - Dan + Shay & Justin Bieber
and even more...
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end...
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