The cult favorite series, The Green Hornet, starring Van Williams, Bruce Lee, and William Dozier (as the narrator), premired on ABC-TV on this date.
Van Williams became good friends with Bruce Lee and repeatedly negotiated with the show's producers to give Lee more screen time and lines. Bruce Lee once said that he was selected for the role of Kato because he was the only Asian actor who could properly pronounce "Britt Reid".
September 9, 1966 -
ABC-TV premiered, at the time, the highest budgeted science fiction series, The Time Tunnel, Rendezvous with Yesterday, on this date. The series starred James Darren and Robert Colbert.
Many episodes made extensive use of stock footage from the 20th Century Fox film library, which allowed Irwin Allen to do shows against an "epic" backdrop that could not have been done on a television budget.
September 9, 1967 -
The animated sci-fi series Birdman and the Galaxy Trio produced by Hanna-Barbera debuted on NBC on this date. (An easy bar bet to win: Birdman and the Galaxy Trio never appeared together in any of the episodes.)
In 2000, the Carton Network premiered a series Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, a parody of the Birdman series, featuring cameos by many Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, usually appearing as parody versions of "themselves". For example, one episode featured The Flintstones mixed with elements of The Sopranos.
September 9, 1971 -
Imagine, John Lennon's second solo album and most popular of his solo works, was released on this date.
This song is a strong political message sugarcoated in a beautiful melody. Lennon realized the softer approach would bring the song to a wider audience, who hopefully would listen to his message: If you want peace, first you have to imagine it.
September 9, 1975 -
The sitcom Welcome Back Kotter, starring Gabe Kaplan, debuted on ABC-TV on this date.
The original title of the series was to be simply Kotter, but that was before composer John Sebastian had difficulty writing the theme song lyrics. He couldn't find enough rhyming words for the title. Giving up on that tack, he decided to compose lyrics that illustrated the premise of the show in a song called, Welcome Back. The producers were so impressed with the song that they decided to change the series title to Welcome Back, Kotter. The song was also released on a single which went to #1 on the charts.
September 9, 1977 -
David Bowie taped an appearance on Marc Bolan's ITV show, Marc, on this date, singing Heroes as well as a duet with Bolan, Standing Next To You, which was prematurely terminated when Bolan fell from the stage, much to Bowie’s amusement. (The show aired on September 28.)
After the show, the pair recorded a rough outline of a new song, Madman, which were never finished because Bolan was killed in a car crash a week later.
September 9, 1978 -
A Taste of Honey's song Boogie Oogie Oogie topped the charts on this date.
The band got the idea for this song when they played a show at a military base. It was a tough crowd, and the audience was not responding to their songs. Lead singer Hazel Payne admonished them from the stage: "If you're thinking that you're too cool to boogie, we've got news for you. Everyone here tonight must boogie and you are no exception to the rule." Afterwards in her hotel room, bass player Janice Marie Johnson wrote down the line, thinking that it would be a good song lyric. The single went on to sell over 2 million copies.
September 9, 1978 -
The Rolling Stones released their hit, Beast of Burden on this date.
While Richards spent much of the '70s insulating himself with drugs, former London School of Economics student Jagger was running the band. However, by the time of Some Girls, Richards wanted to share the workload. Mojo magazine January 2012 asked Richards how much this song was about his relationship with Jagger? He replied; "Mick wrote a lot of it but I laid the general idea on him. At the time Mick was getting used to running the band. Charlie was just the drummer, I was just the other guitar player. I was trying to say, 'OK I'm back, so let's share a bit more of the power, share the weight, brother."
September 9, 1992 -
During a performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, Nirvana played Lithium, ending in a grand finale where bassist Krist Novoselic tosses his instrument high into the air. When he tries to catch it, he misses, and the bass whacks him in the head.
Nirvana wanted to play Rape Me at the Video Music Awards but MTV wanted Smells Like Teen Spirit. Kurt Cobain had to check out of rehab to attend the show, and had made comments disparaging MTV in the past. At rehearsals, a standoff ensued where MTV threatened to go nuclear, banning not just Nirvana, but other acts from their label if they didn't fall in line. Lithium was the compromise, but Nirvana made the network sweat, playing a few seconds of Rape Me before going into their agreed-upon song.
September 9, 1995 -
Coolio's classic, Gangsta's Paradise (from the movie Dangerous Minds), featuring L. V. topped the charts on this date.
Gangsta's Paradise was a reworking of Stevie Wonder's 1976 song Pasttime Paradise. Coolio updated the lyrics to make it relevant to life on the streets in the mid-'90s.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
September 9, 1087 -
William the Conqueror died of internal injuries, sustained six weeks prior in a horse riding accident at Mantes-la-Jolie.
Don't you just wish they had television back then.
September 9, 1890 -
134 years ago today a little boy named Harland was born in Kentucky.
When Harland was six, his father died and his mother was forced to go to work. Little Harland did most of the cooking for his younger siblings. By the age of seven he was a master of the local cuisine.
There was no stopping the ambitious Harland, who had his own highway service station in Corbin, Kentucky, by the time he was forty.
He began cooking for hungry travelers who stopped at his service station. He didn't own a restaurant, so he served them at his own dining table. Word of his excellent cooking spread (secret combination of eleven herbs and spices) and soon he moved across the street to a restaurant that seated 142 people.
His cooking soon became so well known that his state's governor, Ruby Laffoon, made him a colonel.
In an independent 1976 survey, Colonel Harland Sanders was ranked as the world's second most recognizable figure.
September 9, 1947 -
At the Naval Weapons Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, Grace Murray Hopper records the discovery of the first actual computer “bug” by the computer’s operators at 3:45pm in her log book with the explanation, “First instance of actual computer bug being found.” The bug is literally just that, a moth which had become stuck in Relay #70 on Panel “F” of the Harvard Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator. When they extracted the culprit with tweezers, they taped it into the logbook along with the official report.
Legend has it that Hopper, a naval officer and famous mathematician, was the one who found the bug, but she will state categorically that she wasn’t there at the time. The urban legend will crop up that this was the first-ever use of the word ‘bug’ in this context, but that’s not true. Thomas Edison used the term bug when discussing electrical circuits as early as the 1870s. It is, however, the first time the term “debug” is used. The log book will later be preserved by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
September 9, 1956 -
Elvis Presley made his first-ever appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, performing four songs for guest host Charles Laughton on this date.
Ed himself had vowed never to have Presley on his show, but Sullivan was at home this evening, recuperating from a severe head injury, from a drunken fall.
September 9, 1971 -
1,300 inmates riot inside the Attica Correctional Facility in western New York state, commandeering the prison and taking 40 guards hostage on this date.
The national guard staged an assault five days later, killing 42 people in the process (10 of them being captives).
September 9, 1976 -
If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.
In 1965, he launched the controversial Cultural Revolution, an often-brutal campaign to reform Chinese society. He was later held responsible for over 70 million deaths. Mao Tse- tung’s death triggered a two-year power struggle. The Cultural Revolution's chief architects, Mao’s widow (Jiang Qing) and three others, the so-called Gang of Four, were jailed. Deng Xiaoping returned from disgrace and eventually seized power.
September 9, 2003 -
Edward Teller, the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb" and purported model for Dr. Strangelove (or Dr. Kissinger, take your pick), died at the age of 95 at his home on the Stanford University campus.
His role in the destruction of colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer's career during the McCarthy era resulted in his own ostracism by many of his peers.
And no, he didn't utter, Mein Fuhrer, I can walk just before his death.
September 9, 2015 -
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor-Mountbatten had been the head of her family owned business for more than 23,227 days - surpassing the reign of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, on this date. (She has been currently working 25,420 days.)
The BBC noted that the Queen did not want a fuss to be made. “It is evidently viewed as bad form for one long-lived queen to be seen in any way to be celebrating the passing of a record set by another long-lived queen.”
Sadly the Queen passed away on the 8th of September, 2022. She had been on the job for 70 years, 7 months and 2 days, Have a good thought for her majesty today.
Before you go -
And so it goes.
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