1856 - Educator, Black leader and author Booker T. Washington is born.

1895 - Playwright Oscar Wilde loses his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who'd accused the writer of homosexual practices.

1900 - Academy award winning actor Spencer Bonaventure Tracy is born. Among his films were Captains Courageous, Boys Town, San Francisco, Stanley and Livingstone, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Adam’s Rib, Father of the Bride, Pat and Mike, The Old Man and the Sea, How the West Was Won, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

1908 - Academy Award winning actress Bette Davis is born Ruth Elizabeth. Her films include Dangerous, Jezebel, Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes, Now, Voyager, Mr. Skeffington, All About Eve and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

1916 - Actor Gregory Peck is born Eldred Gregory Peck. With Ava Gardner he made two films based on Hemingway stories, The Macomber Affair and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. In addition to the pot-boiler Westerns like The Gunfighter, he also made some films with socially important themes, like The Man in The Gray-Flannel Suit and Gentleman's Agreement. But his signature role will always be that of Atticus Fench in the 1962 film of To Kill a Mockingbird. He also played Captain Ahab in Moby Dick.

1926 - Film director Roger Corman is born. His films include The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Masque of the Red Death, The Raven, Little Shop of Horrors, The Fall of the House of Usher and Swamp Women.

1934 - Jazz tenor sax legend Stanley Turrentine is born. He was one of the ‘Pittsburgh Brethren’, playing with Tommy Turrentine, Lowell Fulson, Tadd Dameron, Earl Bostic and Max Roach. His hits included: The Look of Love, Midnight Special, Look Out, Pieces of a Dream, Straight Ahead and Wonderland.

1941 - Actor Michael Moriarty is born. His films include Bang the Drum Slowly, The Last Detail and Windmills of the Gods.

1946 - Actress and one-time fiancée of Paul McCartney, Jane Asher is born. She would appear in such works as Dreamchild, Masque of the Red Death, The Prince and the Pauper and Brideshead Revisited

1955 - Richard J. Daley is elected mayor of Chicago, IL, starting one of the most controversial political careers not only of the Windy City, but anywhere.

1958 - Johnny Mathis’ album, Johnny’s Greatest Hits, on Columbia Records, makes it to the pop music charts for the first time. The LP remained on the charts for a record 490 weeks (nearly 9-1/2 years!) The record began its stay at number one (three weeks) on June 9, 1958. Mathis studied opera from age 13 and earned a track and field scholarship at San Francisco State College. He was invited to Olympic try-outs and chose a singing career instead. He was originally a jazz-style singer when Mitch Miller of Columbia switched Mathis to singing pop ballads. Johnny would chart over 60 albums in 30 years.

1964 - Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur dies in Washington at age 84.

1965 - The 37th Annual Academy Awards are held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles. My Fair Lady will earn 8 of the coveted statues this evening, including, best actress for Julie Andrews, best actor for Rex harrison, and best director for George Cukor.

1966 - Dr. Timothy Leary speaks at New York’s Town Hall, comparing LSD to a microscope saying that the drug “is to psychology what the microscope is to biology.”

1966 - Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready is born.

1967 - The Doors play the Fresno District Fairgrounds, Fresno, CA.

1970 - A New York Times article defends rock music as 'the most popular of creative arts today.'

1971 - As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the New School for Social Research in New York City is one of the first institutions to offer a course on rock & roll music. Several years later, it would also be the first school to offer a course in audio engineering.

1976 - At a three-day rally billed as Japan Celebrates the Whale and Dolphin in Tokyo, Jackson Browne, Richie Havens, John Sebastian and other performers help to raise $150,000 for the effort to save whales and dolphins from the nets of the international fishing industry.

1980 - EMI Records announce a 28-million pound loss for the second half of 1979. The company had seen an 18-million pound profit for the same time period a year earlier. The stats show the hard times the record industry is currently experiencing.

1981 - Canned Heat vocalist Bob 'the Bear' Hite dies of a heart attack in Venice, California. He was 36 years old.

1982 - After years of publication to the radio and recording industry, Record World magazine ceases publication and files for bankruptcy protection.

1985 - Broadcasters band together to play the single, We Are the World at 10:50 a.m. E.S.T. Stations in the United States were joined by hundreds of others around the world in a sign of unification for the African relief cause. Even Muzak made the song only the second vocal selection it has ever played in elevators and offices since its inception.

1987 - Calling it the first launching of a television network in almost 40 years, the FOX Broadcasting Company, under the direction of media and publishing baron Rupert Murdoch, starts broadcasting with two Sunday night offerings. Married......With Children and The Tracey Ullman Show are the beginnings of the FOX lineup.

1993 - Construction begins on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

1994 - Tough luck if you were thinking of winning a Boston Music Award this year. Aerosmith walks (this;) away with seven of them.

1997 - Allen Ginsberg, the counterculture guru who'd shattered conventions as poet laureate of the Beat Generation, dies in New York City at age 70.

1998 - Legendary rock drummer Cozy (Collin) Powell is killed in a high-speed car crash near Bristol, England. Powell was one of Britain's best players, playing with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Jeff Beck, Brian May and Whitesnake. He was 50.

2000 - The Doors' Ray Manzarek reunites with guitarist Robby Krieger for a set at the Whisky in Los Angeles, where it all began for a the legendary band. Guests include Perry Farrell and John Doe.

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