March 18
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Events on This Day
1813 - David Melville of Newport, Rhode Island patented the gas streetlight. He celebrated by having the new lights installed in front of his house!1902 - Enrico Caruso recorded 10 arias for the Gramophone Company. The recording session took place in Milan, Italy and Caruso walked away with $500 for his effort.
1910 - Hold on to your hats! The opera, The Pipe of Desire, was first performed this day at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Frederick Sheperd Converse wrote the work that turned out to be the first opera by an American composer to be performed at the Met.
1918 - The first seagoing ship made of concrete was launched at Redwood City, CA, near San Francisco. The ship was named Faith and those who launched her had plenty of that. They had faith that the vessel wouldn’t sink. It didn’t. Faith cost $750,000 to build.
1931 - Schick, Inc., the razor company, displayed the first electric shaver -- in Stamford, CT.
1937 - A public school building in New London, Texas was destroyed by a natural gas explosion. An investigation later determined that a gas leak in the large, unvented basement of the school had been ignited by an unknown spark in the building. Some 298 students, teachers and visitors were killed either immediately or within a few days because of injuries. The natural gas used in the building was raw, unprocessed natural gas, which is virtually odorless. As a result of the disaster, the Texas Legislature passed regulations requiring that all utility gas must be odorized so that leaks could be more easily detected.
1940 - Light of the World was first heard on NBC radio. The soap opera was unique in that it featured the Bible as the center of the story line.
1940 - Glen Gray and his orchestra recorded No Name Jive on Decca Records.
1940 - Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass across the Alps. The Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany’s war against France and Great Britain.
1953 - Major-league baseball announced the first team relocation since 1903. The Boston Braves told of their plans to move west to Milwaukee, WI. The Red Sox stayed in Beantown. In 1965, the Braves moved again, this time they went south to Atlanta. The Brewers then took over Milwaukee County Stadium.
1959 - Bill Sharman of the Boston Celtics began what was to be the longest string of successful consecutive free throws (56 in a row) to set a new National Basketball Association record.
1962 - France and the Algerian nationalists agreed to a truce ending the seven-year Algeria War. Algeria became independent on July 3, 1962.
1963 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled (Gideon v. Wainwright) that states must supply free legal council to all poor persons facing criminal charges.
1965 - Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov took the first space walk. He left his Voskhod 2 capsule and remained outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by a tether.
1967 - The Beatles went gold, receiving a gold record for the single, Penny Lane. The ‘B’ side of the hit record was the also-popular Strawberry Fields Forever.
1968 - The U.S. Congress passed “An Act to Eliminate the reserve requirements for Federal Reserve Notes and for United States Notes and Treasury Notes of 1890”. This Act was designed to remove the 25% gold certificate requirement against Federal Reserve notes in circulation.
1970 - Brook Benton received a gold record for the hit single, Rainy Night in Georgia. It was Benton’s first hit since 1963’s Hotel Happiness.
1978 - The Bee Gees started an eight-week stay at the top of the pop music charts with Night Fever (they had a total of nine #1 hits) from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Makes you want to get out that white suit and black shirt, doesn’t it?
1982 - Singer Teddy Pendergrass was injured when his car struck a tree in Philadelphia. He was left paralyzed but continued his recording career. Pendergrass died in 2010.
1985 - The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) announced plans to merge with Capital Cities Communications to form Cap Cities/ABC. The $3.5 billion merger was the 11th largest corporate merger in U.S. history.
1985 - History was made in the short-lived United States Football League this day. A pro football record was set by Denver and Houston of the USFL with a total of 112 passes thrown in the game. Houston went airborne 69 times, Denver took to the air 43 times.
1986 - The U.S. Treasury Department announced that a clear, polyester thread was to be woven into bills in an effort to thwart counterfeiters.
1988 - Trumpeter Billy Butterfield, a leading sideman during the swing era, died in North Palm Beach, Florida of cancer. He was 71 years old. Butterfield’s melodic trumpet was heard in the bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Bob Crosby and Les Brown. He also led his own orchestra for brief periods and recorded two hit albums with trombonist Ray Conniff in the early 1960s.
1990 - An alliance of conservative parties won a surprising victory in East Germany’s first free elections. The Christian Democratic Union, a non- Communist party, won the most seats in parliament. Together with the Social Democrats and some smaller parties, the Christian Democratic Union formed a government with CDU leader Lothar de Maiziere as leader. The Socialist Unity Party, which had been renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism, won only about 17 percent of the seats in the legislature.
1990 - Twelve paintings valued at $300-million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. A $5-million reward was offered for the safe recovery of all stolen items in good condition...
1992 - Leona Helmsley was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion.
1995 - Spain’s Princess Elena married a banker, Jaime de Marichalar y Saenz de Tejada, in Seville; it was Spain’s first royal wedding in 89 years. The groom followed an old Castilian custom by pouring 13 gold coins into the hands of his bride as a sign that their goods would be held in common.
1997 - Thousands of people lined the streets in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to watch the funeral procession for rapper Christopher ‘Notorious B.I.G.’ Wallace. He had been murdered nine days earlier in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles.
1999 - The Kosovar Albanian delegation signed a U.S.-sponsored peace accord following talks in Paris; the Clinton administration warned NATO would act against Serb targets if Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic didn’t accept the agreement.
2001 - The Socialists crept into power in Paris. In a sqeaky tight election, so-called ‘Left’ was victorious in France for the first time in 130 years.
2001 - John Phillips, co-founder of The Mamas & The Papas died in Los Angeles at age 65. Phillips wrote the group’s biggest hits, including California Dreamin’ and Monday, Monday.
2002 - The FBI’s Operation Candyman caught some 90 people following a 14-month investigation of child pornography on the Internet.
2002 - Britain’s House of Commons voted to ban fox hunting along with the hunting of stags and hares with packs of hounds.
2003 - Brian Mitchell and Wanda Barzee were charged in Salt Lake City with aggravated kidnapping, sexual assault and burglary in the abduction of Elizabeth Smart. The teenager had been found with Mitchell and Barzee six days earlier.
2004 - A 100-foot diameter asteroid passed within 26,500 miles of Earth. It was the closest recored brush by an asteroid.
2005 - Ice Princess opened in U.S. theatres. The romantic comedy stars Joan Cusack, Kim Cattrall, Michelle Trachtenberg, Hayden Panettiere, Trevor Blumas and Juliana Cannarozzo. Also opening was the horror film The Ring Two, with Naomi Watts, David Dorfman, Simon Baker, Emily VanCamp, Sissy Spacek, Elizabeth Perkins, Meagen Fay and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
2005 - Doctors in Florida removed the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo despite efforts by congressional Republicans to halt the process.
2005 - Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. agreed to pay a record $11 million fine to settle a civil immigration case for using illegal immigrants to clean store floors in 21 states.
2006 - Bill Beutel, the longtime TV news anchor of Eyewitness News on WABC-TV, New York, and host of ABC’s AM America, died in Pinehurst, NC. He was 75 years old.
2007 - Bob Woolmer, coach of the Pakistan cricket team, was found dead in his hotel room in Jamaica. The 58-year-old was found a few hours after Pakistan was upset by Ireland and eliminated from advancment at the Cricket World Cup. A pathologist report initially found Woolmer’s death was due to strangulation, but three independent pathologists later said that he was not strangled. An enlarged heart and diabetes may have contributed, but his death remains an unsolved mystery.
2008 - Airbus’s A380, the world’s biggest passenger plane, touched down in London on its first commercial flight in Europe.
2008 - The U.S. Federal Reserve approved a .75% cut in the federal funds rate to 2.25%. The moved aimed at shoring up the U.S. financial system (shaken by huge losses in the housing market). The DJIA responded with a gain of 420.41 to close at 12,392.66.
2009 - The U.S. central bank announced that it planned to pump more than $1 trillion into the economy. Plans included the buying of up to $300 billion in long-term government bonds and $750 billion in mortgage-backed securities. All this to help revive the sagging U.S. housing market.
2009 - The Australian government announced plans to crack down on excessive executive pay packages. The government plan was to amend the "Corporations Act" to require shareholder approval for any termination payments that exceed average annual base salary.
2009 - 45-year-old actress Natasha Richardson died in New York City from a severe brain injury suffered in a skiing accident in Canada earlier in the week.
2010 - U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon signed a cooperation agreement with Nikolai Bordyuzha, head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-dominated alliance that includes Russia and six other former Soviet republics. Ban said the declaration was an important step for the U.N. to consolidate cooperation with regional organizations.
2010 - U.S. President Barack Obama signed a $17.6 billion job-creation measure. This, a day after it was passed by Congress.
2011 - Movies opening in U.S. theatres: Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish, Andrew Howard and Anna Friel; Paul, with Mia Stallard, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jeremy Owen and Jeffrey Tambor; The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy, and Josh Lucas; Cracks, with Eva Green, Juno Temple, María Valverde, Imogen Poots and Ellie Nunn; The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman, with Masanobu Ando, You Benchang, Liu Xiaoye, Ashton Xu and Kitty Zhang Yuqi; Desert Flower, with Liya Kebede, Sally Hawkins, Craig Parkinson and Meera Syal; the documentary Tornado Alley; Win Win, starring Paul Giamatt, Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale, Jeffrey Tambor, Burt Young and Melanie Lynskey and Winter in Wartime, with Martijn Lakemeier, Yorick van Wageningen, Jamie Campbell Bower, Raymond Thiry and Melody Klaver.
2011 - The Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the .xxx domain for adult-content websites.
2011 - Canada announced its deployment of CF-18 fighter jets to help enforce the no-fly zone over Libya. The six fighter aircraft would join the HMCS Charlottetown and British, French and American allies. And Italy said it would allow its military bases to be used for the U.N.-backed military intervention to enforce the Libya no-fly zone.
2012 - And blood continued to flow in Mexico: Gunmen ambushed and killed 12 police officers on a road leading out of the town of Teloloapan. Another 11 officers were wounded. They had been sent to search for the bodies of 10 people whose severed heads were found in southern Guerrero state. (More than 47,000 people had died in drug violence nationwide since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on drug cartels in December 2006.)
2012 - Once opened at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre on Broadway. The musical received eleven 2012 Tony Award nominations, and won eight, including Best Musical, Best Actor and Best Book. The production was based on the 2007 film of the same name. Like the film, music and lyrics were by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, including the Academy Award-winning "Falling Slowly". The Broadway show played 1,168 performances, closing Jan 4, 2015.
2013 - Computer hacker Andrew Auernheimer was sentenced in New Jersey to three years and five months in prison for stealing the personal data of about 120,000 Apple iPad users, including big-city mayors, a TV network news anchor and a Hollywood movie mogul.
2013 - The British government announced plans to join industrial partners in the creation of a 2-billion pound aerospace center. The new UK Aerospace Technology Institute was expected to focus on developing technology for the next generation of quieter, more energy-efficient aircraft.
2014 - French foreign minister Laurent Fabius announced that leaders of the Group of Eight world powers had suspended Russia’s participation in the club. The suspension was prompted by tensions over Ukraine and Russia’s incursion into Crimea. And U.S. Vice President Joe Biden warned Russia that the U.S. and Europe would impose further sanctions if Moscow continued to seek to annex the Ukrainian territory.
2015 - GM announced that the company was pulling its Opel automobile from the Russian market in the face of plummeting sales. And Chevrolet production would be cut back to focus on top-end products, such as Corvettes and Tahoe SUVs, which are imported into Russia from the U.S.
2016 - Movies opening in U.S. theatres included: The Divergent Series: Allegiant, starring Shailene Woodley, Zoë Kravitz and Theo James; Midnight Special, with Adam Driver, Kirsten Dunst and Joel Edgerton; Miracles from Heaven, starring Jennifer Garner, Brighton Sharbino and Martin Henderson; The Bronze, with Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole and Haley Lu Richardson; The Confirmation, starring Clive Owen, Jaeden Lieberher and Maria Bello; Krisha, with Olivia Grace Applegate, Bryan Casserly and Alex Dobrenko; the animated The Little Prince, featuring the voices of Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, Marion Cotillard, James Franco, Benicio Del Toro, Ricky Gervais, Bud Cort, Paul Giamatti, Riley Osborne, Albert Brooks and Mackenzie Foy; The Preppie Connection, starring Lucy Fry, Sam Page and Thomas Mann; The Program, with Ben Foster, Chris O’Dow and Guillaume Canet; and My Golden Days, starring Quentin Dolmaire, Lou Roy-Lecollinet and Mathieu Amalric.
2016 - Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull won approval from Parliament to simplify the country’s convoluted system of proportional representation under which the Senate is elected.
2016 - A Florida jury awarded wrestler/actor Hulk Hogan $115 million in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media. Two days later, a jury added $25 million to the verdict in punitive damages. It was later reported that Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, secretly backed Hogan in the lawsuit. Thiel had been outed as gay by a Gawker-owned website in 2007.
2017 - Finance chiefs of the world’s top 20 economies (G20) meeting in Germany pledged to finalize new banking regulations, easing concerns that the new U.S. administration would pull out of a long-delayed global accord known as Basel III. The G20 dropped a pledge to fully oppose trade protectionism, amid pushback from the government of POTUS Donald Trump.
2017 - Rock and roll legend Chuck Berry died at his home in the St. Louis area. He was 90 years old. His hits included Maybellene (1955), Roll Over Beethoven (1956), Rock and Roll Music (1957). His 1958 hit Johnny B. Goode was so influential and recognizable that the U.S. space program chose it to represent rock music for potential extraterrestrial listeners on the Voyager spacecraft. Chuck Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having “laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance.”
2018 - Australia’s prime minister and Southeast Asian leaders meeting in Sydney called on North Korea to end its nuclear program and urged U.N. countries to fully implement sanctions against the country. Leaders at the first summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN, issued a joint statement with Australia that also called for non-militarization and a code of conduct in the contested waters of the South China Sea, where China was increasingly assertive.
2019 - Russian President Vladimir Putin signed bills restricting online media and criminalizing anyone who insults the state. Critics saw the new laws as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to stifle criticism and tighten control of the media.
2019 - French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced a ban on ‘yellow vest’ protests in Paris’ Champs-Elysees avenue -- and two other cities. The action followed riots that left luxury stores ransacked and charred from arson fires.
2020 - COVID-19 news: 1)The U.S. gave taxpayers an extra 90 days to pay their federal taxes and announced that it would not pursue foreclosures of evictions on government guaranteed mortgages for at least 60 days. 2)The U.S. had 7,327+ confirmed cases of coronavirus with at least 115 deaths. The virus had infected over 214,000 and killed over 8,727 in 164 nations. 3)California sent $100 million to local governments for shelter support and emergency housing to help slow the spread of coronavirus among the homeless population. Another $50 million would be used to buy trailers and lease hotel and motel rooms to quarantine homeless people showing symptoms of COVID-19. 4)Nevada shut down all non-essential businesses, including the Las Vegas casinos at the heart of the state’s economy. 5)JPMorgan Chase & Co said that it had committed $50 million to funds and community groups that were providing food, support and medical supplies for people hurt by the coronavirus in the United States, Europe and Asia.
2020 - Thomas Waerner of Norway arrived first at the finish line in Nome to win the 1,000-mile Iditirod Trail Sled Dog Race. Waerner was presented with a new truck and a $51,000 check for his victory. His dogs stood behind him as he was awarded his prizes, their tails wagging.
2021 - President Joe Biden met via computer with the U.N. Security Council and reaffirmed his determination to restore U.S. global leadership and re-engage with institutions around the world.
2021 - Russian dictator Vladimir Putin responded to President Biden’s comment calling him a killer, by challenging the U.S. leader to a conversation by video-link and broadcast live. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden had no regrets about calling Putin a killer and swatted away a question about Putin’s request for an immediate call in public.
2021 - Ukraine reported 15,053 new coronavirus cases surpassing 1.5 million in total. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the capital would go into a lockdown because of the surge in cases.
2022 - Movies scheduled to open in the U.S. included: Umma, starring Sandra Oh, Dermot Mulroney and Odeya Rush; Alice, with Keke Palmer, Common and Jonny Lee Miller; Measure of Revenge, starring Bella Thorne, Melissa Leo and Jake Weary; The Outfit, with Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutchand Dylan O’Brien; and X, starring Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow and Mia Goth.
2022 - Hundreds of Greek farmers, some on tractors, protested in Athens, demanding more tax cuts and subsidies to combat high fuel and fertilizer prices that had soared since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
2022 - Russian dictator Vladimir Putin made a hypocritical attempt to justify his invasion of Ukraine. At a rally in Moscow, his speech was abruptly cut off on the state TV broadcast (the Kremlin described the blackout as a technical error). People waved the Russian flag at the national stadium as they took part in the celebrations commemorating the eighth year of Russia’s annexation of Crimea – which is deemed illegal by the Ukrainian government and not recognized in the West. Speaking from a stage in front of a banner that read, “For a world without Nazism,” Putin said Russia was attacking Ukraine “To spare people from this suffering, from this genocide – this is the main reason, motive and purpose of the military operation that we launched in the Donbas [an eastern Ukrainian region] and Ukraine.” Bear in mind that Ukraine has a democratically elected president who is Jewish, and who lost relatives in the Holocaust. (Criticisms of Russia’s perceived hypocrisy grew even louder, when Russian strikes hit a memorial to Babyn Yar — the site where Nazis killed tens of thousands of Jews during World War II.)
2022 - More evidence of Russian hypocrisy surfaced when General Roman Gavrilov, deputy head of the national guard, was arrested -- as Putin moved to ‘purify’ his ranks of those he accused of being traitors.
2023 - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced an extension of the Black Sea grain deal that was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022. The U.N. promised to guarantee safe passage for ships carrying vital grain exports from Ukraine. “As a result of our negotiations with both parties, we extended the agreement period,” Erdogan said at an event in Turkey’s Çanakkale province. Ukraine and Russia are both significant suppliers of food to the world. Ukraine -- known as one of the globe’s breadbaskets -- normally supplies about 45 million metric tons of grain to the global market every year and is the world’s top exporter of sunflower oil.
and more...
Birthdays on This Day March 18
1782 - John Calhoun
U.S. Vice President under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson [1825-1832]; the first VP to resign from office: became a U.S. Senator; died Mar 31, 18501837 - Grover (Stephen) Cleveland
22nd [1885-1889] & 24th [1893-1897] U.S. President; only one to serve 2 nonconsecutive terms; only president to be married in White House [to Frances Folsom (2 sons, 3 daughters)]; the 1st to have a child born there; died June 24, 19081844 - Nikolai (Nikolay Andreyevich) Rimsky-Korsakov
composer: Scheherazade, Song of India, The Flight of the Bumblebee; died June 21, 19081858 - Rudolf Diesel
mechanical engineer: invented the Diesel engine; died Sep 29, 19131869 - Neville Chamberlain
British Prime Minister [1937-1940]; died Nov 9, 19401886 - Edward Everett Horton
narrator: Fractured Fairy Tales on The Bullwinkle Show; actor: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Lost Horizon, Sex and the Single Girl, Arsenic and Old Lace; died Sep 29, 19701901 - William H. (Henry) Johnson
artist: expressionist: Minnie, Sun Setting, Denmark; returned to U.S. when Hitler began destroying African and primitive themes; known later for historical African-American figures & events: Going to Church, Mom and Dad; died Apr 13, 19701905 - Robert Donat
Academy Award-winning actor: Goodbye, Mr. Chips [1939]; The Private Life of Henry VIII, The 39 Steps, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The Magic Box, The Winslow Boy, Perfect Strangers, Cure for Love; died Jun 9, 19581911 - Smiley (Lester Alvin) Burnette
actor: Western Double Features, Gene Autry Matinee Double Features, Dick Tracy: The Original Serial, King of the Cowboys, Springtime in the Rockies, Silver Spurs; died Feb 16, 1967; more1915 - Richard Condon
author: The Manchurian Candidate, Prizzi’s Honor, Winter Kills, The Oldest Confession; died Apr 9, 19961923 - Andy Granatelli
Motorsports Hall of Famer: CEO/spokesman for STP motor oil company: “STP is the racer’s edge.”; autobiography: "They Call Me Mister 500"; died Dec 29, 20131926 - Peter Graves (Aurness)
actor: Mission Impossible, The Winds of War, Airplane, Airplane 2, Stalag 17, The President’s Plane is Missing, The Night of the Hunter; brother of actor James Arness; died Mar 14, 20101927 - George Plimpton
author: Paper Lion, Shadow Box actor: Rio Lobo, Reds, Little Man Tate, Just Cause; died Sep 25, 20031932 - John Updike
writer: The Witches of Eastwicke, Rabbit Run; died Jan 27, 20091936 - Frederik Willem de Klerk
president: South Africa [1989-1994]; recipient [with Nelson Mandela] of Nobel Peace Prize [1993] for democratization of South Africa; died Nov 11, 20211937 - Mark Donohue
auto racer: Indianapolis 500 winner [1972]; killed practicing for Austrian Grand Prix at Graz, Austria Aug 19, 19751938 - Shashi Kapoor
actor: Gulliver’s Travels, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, Heat and Dust, The Householder; died Dec 4, 20171938 - Charley Pride
Country Music Hall of Famer: Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’, Why Baby Why; member of Grand Ol’ Opry, CMA Entertainer of the Year [1971], Male Vocalist of the Year [1971-1972]; semipro baseball player; died Dec 12, 20201941 - Margie Bowes
country entertainer: Grand Ole Opry; married to Doyle Wilburn of the Wilburn Brothers1941 - Pat (Robert Patrick) Jarvis
baseball: pitcher: Atlanta Braves, Montreal Expos1941 - Wilson Pickett
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame singer: In the Midnight Hour, Land of 1000 Dances, Funky Broadway, Mustang Sally, It’s Too Late, Don’t Knock My Love; died Jan 19, 20061942 - Jeff Mullins
basketball: Duke Univ All-American, 1964 Olympics, Atlanta Hawks1943 - Kevin Dobson
actor: Kojak, Knots Landing, Shannon, Dirty Work, Code of Honor, Midway; died Sep 6, 20201946 - Michael Reagan
radio talk show host: The Michael Reagan Show; TV host: Lingo; his parents were U.S. President Ronald Reagan and actress Jane Wyman1947 - B.J. (Barrie James) Wilson
musician: drummer: group: Procol Harum: Whiter Shade of Pale; died Oct 8, 19901948 - Guy Lapointe
hockey: NHL: Montreal Canadiens, SL Blues, Boston Bruins1950 - Brad Dourif
actor: Lord of the Rings film series, Deadwood, Phoenix, Color of Night, Wild Palms, Final Judgement, Jungle Fever, Body Parts, Mississippi Burning, Blue Velvet, Dune, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Studs Lonigan1950 - John Hartman
musician: drums: group: The Doobie Brothers: Listen to the Music, Long Train Runnin’, China Grove, Black Water, What a Fool Believes; veterinarian1951 - Ben Cohen
activist, philanthropist, businessman: co-founder [w/Jerry Greenfield] of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream1951 - Bill Frisell
jazz guitarist, composer, arranger: performed with a variety of artists, not all of them jazz musicians: Elvis Costello, John Zorn, Rickie Lee Jones, Suzanne Vega, Arto Lindsay, Loudon Wainwright III, Vic Chesnutt, Van Dyke Parks, Buddy Miller, Ron Sexsmith, Chip Taylor, Gavin Bryars1952 - Mike Webster ‘Iron Mike’: Pro Football Hall of Famer: Pittsburgh Steelers center [1974-1988]: Super Bowl IX, X, XIII, XIV; played more seasons [15] and more games [220] than any player in Steelers’ history; died Sep 24, 2002
1956 - Ingemar Stenmark
Swedish skier: holds individual racing record of 86 wins including 46 giant slalom and 40 slalom out of 287 contests, [1974-1989]1957 - Christer Fuglesang
Swedish physicist, European Space Agency [ESA] astronaut: first Swedish citizen in space: launched aboard STS-116 Space Shuttle mission Dec 10, 20061959 - Irene Cara
singer: Fame, The Dream; actress: Fame, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Caged in Paradiso, City Heat, For Us the Living, Killing ’Em Softly, Flashdance... What a Feeling1961 - Bob Woodruff
TV journalist, anchor: ABC Evening News, 20/20, Modern Marvels; he was seriously injured while covering the war in Iraq [2006]1963 - Vanessa L. Williams
singer: LPs: The Comfort Zone, The Sweetest Days; actress: Eraser, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man; Broadway: Kiss of the Spider Woman, Into The Woods; Miss America 19841964 - Bonnie Blair
Olympic Gold medalist [1988] and world record holder: speed skater [1994]1966 - Jerry Cantrell
songwriter, musician: guitar; singer: group: Alice in Chains: Man in the Box, Them Bones, Rooster, Angry Chair, Would?, No Excuses, I Stay Away, Grind, Heaven Beside You, Again1967 - Andre Rison
football [wide receiver]: NFL: Indianapolis Colts, Atlanta Falcons, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Green Bay Packers, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders1970 - Queen Latifah (Dana Owens)
‘Rap’s first lady’: Wrath of My Madness; actress: The Equalizer, Jungle Fever, House Party 2, Living Single, Sphere, The Wizard of Oz, Queen Latifah Show, Spin City, Chicago1975 - Sutton Foster
Tony Award-winning actress: Thoroughly Modern Millie [2002], Anything Goes [2011]; Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek the Musical, Violet1975 - Brian Griese
football [quarterback]: Univ of Michigan; NFL: Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers1977 - Zdeno Chara
hockey [defender]: NHL: New York Islanders [1997–2001]; Ottawa Senators [2001–2006]; Boston Bruins [2006–2019]: 2011 Stanley Cup champs; Washington Capitals [2020]1978 - Brian Scalabrine
basketball [power forward]: NBA: New Jersey Nets [2001–2005], Boston Celtics [2005–2010: NBA champs 2008], Chicago Bulls [2010–2012]1979 - Danneel Ackels
actress: Friends with Benefits, One Tree Hill, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, NCIS, CSI: Miami, Mardi Gras: Spring Break, Naughty or Nice1979 - Adam Levine
musician: guitar; singer: group: Maroon 5: This Love, She Will Be Loved, Sunday Morning, Harder to Breathe, Must Get Out, Not Coming Home, The Sun1981 - Vanessa Evigan
actress: Against the Grain, Social Studies, The Young and the Restless, Quiet Kill, Net Games, Sorority Boys, Time of Fear, Whatever It Takes, Earthquake in New York, Mel1982 - Adam Pally
actor: Happy Endings, The Mindy Project, The To Do List, Search Party, Iron Man 3, Californication1987 - Rebecca Soni
swimming champion: breaststroke specialist, six-time Olympic medalist [gold at 2012 Olympics for the 200-meter breaststroke]1989 - Lily Collins
actress: The Blind Side, Abduction, Mirror Mirror, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Love, Rosie1996 - Madeline Carroll
actress: 6, Flipped, The Escape Clause, The Santa Clause 3, High School Musical, Vanilla Gorilla, Mr. Popper’s Penguins; more
and still more...
Hit Music on This Day March 18
1944Mairzy Doats (facts) - The Merry Macs
Besame Mucho (facts) - The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra (vocal: Bob Eberly & Kitty Kallen
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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