Subj : Events January 10
To   : alt.bbs.ads
From : Bob Hoffman
Date : Mon Jan 10 2005 05:17 am

http://www.440.com/twtd/today.html

Events January 10
1911 - Major Jimmie Erickson shot the first photograph from an airplane
while flying over San Diego, California.
1943 - The quiz show, The Better Half, was first heard on Mutual radio this
day. The wartime radio program brought four married couples to compete in
stunts involving traditional concepts of, er, 'manhood' and 'womanhood'.

1945 - Erskine Hawkins waxed a classic for Victor Records. The tune, with
the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, was titled Tippin' In.

1947 - Finian's Rainbow opened on the Great White Way in New York City. The
musical played for 725 performances. Years later, Petula Clark would star
and sing in the celluloid version on the silver screen.

1949 - The Radio Corporation of America, sometimes known as RCA, announced a
new 7-inch, 45 rpm phonograph record. Soon, the 45, the record with the big
hole in the middle, would change the pop music business. RCA even
manufactured a record player that played only 45s -- with a fat spindle that
made "stacking wax" real simple and automatic for those romantic times when
hands were just too busy to be flippin' records.

1950 - Ben Hogan, appearing for the first time in a golf tournament since an
auto accident a year earlier, tied 'Slammin' Sammy Snead in the Los Angeles
Open. Hogan lost in a playoff.

1956 - Elvis Presley recorded his first tunes as an RCA Victor artist.
Recording in Nashville, Elvis sang Heartbreak Hotel, I Was the One, I'm
Counting On You, I Got a Woman and Money Honey. Heartbreak Hotel was #1 by
April 11, 1956 and stayed there for eight weeks. It was #1 on the pop and
rhythm and blues charts and number five on the country music list.

1960 - Marty Robbins' hit tune, El Paso, held the record for the longest #1
song to that time. The song ran 5 minutes and 19 seconds, giving many radio
station Program Directors fits; because the average record length at that
time was around 2 minutes, and formats didn't allow for records much longer
than that, (e.g., 2-minute record, 3 minutes for commercials, 60 seconds for
promo, 2-minute record, etc.). DJs got used to the longer length quickly,
however, realizing it gave them time, before the record ended, to actually
think of something to say next...

1963 - The Chicago Cubs become the first baseball club to hire an athletic
director. He was Robert Whitlow.

1969 - Elvis Presley's single, Don't Cry Daddy, entered the Top 10 on the
pop charts this day. If you listened to this song carefully, you'd hear a
vocal duet with country artist Ronnie Milsap.

1969 - The final issue of The Saturday Evening Post appeared after 147 years
of publication. It returned in limited publication years later. Norman
Rockwell's art was a popular item in the Post.

1976 - C.W. McCall's Convoy was the #1 single in the U.S. -- on both pop and
country charts. "Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck ... You
gotta copy on me, Pig Pen, c'mon? Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen, fer shure, fer
shure. By golly, it's clean clear to Flag Town, c'mon. Yeah, that's a big
10-4 there, Pig Pen, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy.
Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy..."

1981 - The Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert and Sullivan, opened on Broadway.
The show, starring pop singers Linda Ronstadt and Rex Smith, was made into a
movie in 1983.

1984 - Cyndi Lauper became the first female recording artist since Bobbie
Gentry [1967] to be nominated for five Grammy Awards: Album of the Year,
Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Performance (Female), Record of the Year and
Song of the Year. She went one better for copping the award for Worst Hair
Coloring by a Woman on the Planet. Girls Just Want to Have Fun ya know...
fer sure.

1990 - Time Inc. aquired Warner Communications for the tidy little sum of
$14.1 billion. Thus began Time Warner, one of the world's largest media and
entertainment conglomerates.

1996 - The third day of the 'Blizzard of '96' saw the northeastern U.S.
buried under 1.5 to 3 feet of snow. The big storm caused $1 billion in
damage and killed 100 people. New York City had the heaviest snowfall in 48
years. Quick, let's go make snow angels.

1997 - These films debuted in U.S. theatres: Evita ("The Most Anticipated
Motion Picture Event of The Year"), starring Madonna, Antonio Banderas,
Jonathan Pryce and Jimmy Nail; Jackie Chan's First Strike ("Jackie Chan
fights for America in his biggest action film ever."; The Relic ("They did
the unthinkable. They brought it back."), with Penelope Ann Miller, Tom
Sizemore, Linda Hunt and James Whitmore; and Turbulence ("If you weren't
afraid of flying before, you will be now.", starring Ray Liotta Lauren Holly
Hector Elizondo Brendan Gleeson.

2000 - America Online, "the company that brought the Internet to the
 masses," announced that it had agreed to buy Time Warner, the largest
traditional media company in the U.S., for $165 billion.

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