| 130 | years ago | 1896 | Guglieimo Marconi's radio is patented in the U.S. |
| 85 | years ago | 1941 | Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts is born, as is William Guest, one of Gladys Knight’s Pips. |
| 64 | years ago | 1962 | Island Records releases its first single -- a tune called Twist Baby by Owen Gray. The label will become home to acts like Jethro Tull, Traffic, and Bob Marley and the Wailers. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | The Rolling Stones play their first show in the United States as part of a tour that also includes The Chiffons, Bobby Goldsboro, and Bobby Vee. The show takes place in Lynn, Massachusetts. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | The Associated Press writes of the Rolling Stones “..they are dirtier and streakier and more disheveled than The Beatles and in some places, they are more popular than The Beatles.” |
| 59 | years ago | 1967 | David Bowie releases his debut album. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | Dion & The Belmonts reunite for one show at Madison Square Garden. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | Paul McCartney and Wings have the #1 song on the chart with My Love. It's in the first of its three straight weeks at the top. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham dumps a bucket of water on legendary concert promoter Bill Graham following an argument at a show in San Francisco. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Bruce Springsteen's long awaited album, Darkness On The Edge of Town, is released. Springsteen was prevented from recording for a year due to litigation involving his former manager. (1978) The album includes the tracks Badlands, Prove It All Night, and the title track. |
| 46 | years ago | 1980 | Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes is born. |
| 38 | years ago | 1988 | True story: James Brown's wife Adrienne claims diplomatic immunity while fighting numerous traffic violations on the grounds that she's the wife of the Official Ambassador of Soul. |
| 37 | years ago | 1989 | Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman marries 19-year-old model Mandy Smith. He is 52. They divorce two years later. And in a twisted side note, Wyman's son dated Mandy's mother! |
| 34 | years ago | 1992 | Rod Stewart and his model wife Rachel Hunter have a baby girl, Renee. |
| 33 | years ago | 1993 | Ronald Ray Howard's murder trial begins in Austin, Texas. Howard killed a state trooper after listening to Tupac Shakur's 2Pacalypse Now album. Howard is convicted and sentenced to death. |
| 22 | years ago | 2004 | In an interview published in the London Daily Mirror, Paul McCartney says he unknowingly tried heroin once when somebody handed him something and he smoked it. “It didn't do anything for me, which was lucky because I wouldn't have fancied heading down that road,” said the former Beatle. “I did cocaine for about a year around the time of Sgt. Pepper. Coke and maybe some grass to balance it out. I was never completely crazy with cocaine.” Paul also says drugs influenced some Beatles songs. “A song like Got to get You Into My Life, that's directly about pot, although everyone missed it at the time. Day Tripper, that's one about acid (LSD). Lucy in the Sky, that's pretty obvious. There's others that make subtle hints about drugs, but, you know, it's easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on The Beatles' music.” |
| 21 | years ago | 2005 | Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter Kelly checks into a drug treatment center in pasadena. A family spokesman says she’s “dealing with some personal issues” and would be back in a few weeks. Kelly had spent several weeks last year in a Malibu treatment center for addiction to prescription painkillers. Brother Jack, and of course, Dad have also battled with substance abuse problems. |
| 21 | years ago | 2005 | Rod Stewart files for divorce from actress Rachel Hunter. They married in 1990, but split in 1999. Hunter had filed for divorce in 2003, but then withdrew that request. Their union produced two children: 12-year-old Liam and 10-year-old Rene. The 60-year-old Stewart had recently announced that his longtime fiancee, model-photographer Penny Lancaster is pregnant with a baby due in early December. He plans to wed her just as soon as his divorce from Hunter is final. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | New Orleans rockers Cowboy Mouth close out the opening night of the eighth Elvis Presley Festival in Tupelo, Mississippi, the King’s birthplace. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | The Rolling Stones announce that their European tour will resume next month in Milan, Italy. 21 stadiums in 11 countries will host the Stones, whose tour was delayed when guitarist Keith Richards suffered a head injury falling from a palm tree in Fiji and had surgery to relieve pressure in his head. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | White Plains, New York police pull over 35-year-old rapper Earl Simmons, a.k.a. DMX for driving his 2001 Chevy Suburban at unreasonable speeds and making unsafe lane changes. They then found he wasn't buckled up, and had no driver’s license. He gets a ticket and a summons to court on June 16. He spent 70 days in jail last year for violating his 2004 parole when he impersonated a federal agent and crashed his car through a gate at Kennedy Airport. |
| 16 | years ago | 2010 | Occasional New Orleans resident Randy Newman gets the 2,411th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame while Eric Idle of Monty Python and John Lasseter of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios look on. The singer/songwriter wrote the score for The Princess and the Frog, an animated film set in New Orleans, as well as Toy Story 3, which is released a few weeks later. |