Today In History: September 5th


Edited From Those Were The Days

1882 – The first Labor Day holiday parade was held in New York City. It was sponsored by the Central Labor Union. Some 10,000 workers — all men — participated in the parade.

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1885Jake Gumper of Ft. Wayne, IN bought the first gasoline pump produced in the United States.

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1906Bradbury Robinson executed the first legal forward pass in football. Robinson threw the ball to Jack Schneider of St. Louis University in a game against Carroll College.

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1956Johnny Cash hit the record running with I Walk the Line. Cash’s debut hit song climbed to #17 on the pop music charts.

1958 – The first color videotaped program was aired. It was The Betty Feezor Show on WBTV-TV in Charlotte, NC. Show.

1960Cassius Clay of Louisville, KY won the gold medal in light heavyweight boxing at the Olympic Games in Rome, Italy. Clay would later change his name to Muhammad Ali and become one of the great boxing champions in the world. In 1996, at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA, Muhammad Ali was given the honor of lighting the Olympic flame.

1964 – The Animals’ House of the Rising Sun made it to #1. It stayed at the top until it was replaced three weeks later by Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman. Orbison’s smash was just entering the pop charts on this day for a 14-week run.

1972PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) terrorists entered the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, killing 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team.

1972Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway won a gold record for their duet, Where is the Love. The song got to number five on the pop music charts and was one of two songs that earned gold for the duo. The other was The Closer I Get To You (1978).

1980Switzerland’s St. Gotthard Auto Tunnel, the longest underground motorway in the world, opened. Traffic moved along the 10+ miles that took ten years to build and cost $417 million.

gotthard1983 – The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) became the first hourlong network news show.

1984Mortimer Zuckerman, a real estate magnate, spent $163 million on a deal. Zuckerman purchased the newsmagazine U.S. News & World Report.

1986 – After 23 years of “oohing” and “aahing,” laughing and kibitzing as host of various talk shows, Merv Griffin aired his final program — for Metromedia Television.

1997Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) died of a heart attack at her Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta, India. The Albanian nun had celebrated her 87th birthday just nine days earlier. The recipient of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa gave hope to millions, caring for, helping and listening to the poor and downtrodden.

1998Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing debuted at #1 on U.S. music charts. The song, from the movie, Armageddon, was the first single by Aerosmith to reach number one. It stayed at the top through the entire month of September.

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