Written By SCOTT TAYLOR

1851 — Herman Melville's Moby Dick is first published as The Whale in London.

1867 — The United States takes possession of Alaska from Russia after purchasing it for $7.2 million.

1898 — Not content with just Alaska, the U.S. takes possession of Puerto Rico from Spain. In 2018, Donald Trump tries to give it back.

1945 — Argentine military officer and politician Juan Peron marries actress Eva Duarte. It's unknown if Argentina cried for her.

1954 — Texas Instruments announces the first transistor radio, and soon boys everywhere would listen to baseball under the covers after bedtime.

1963 — Felicette, a black and white Parisian stray cat, is the first cat to be launched into space. The jokes write themselves on this one.

1979 — The FCC allows Americans to have home satellite earth stations without a federal government licence. That's fancy talk for satellite TV.

Born on This Day

1919 — Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, father of a prime minister of Canada. Kind of like the Bush clan in the U.S.

1926 — Chuck Berry, he taught a generation how to rock and roll.

1927 — George C. Scott, actor, Oscar winner for Patton.

1938 — Dawn Wells, actress, castaway, one-half of the enduring debate of “Ginger or Mary Ann?”

1951 — Pam Dawber, actress, she was Mindy to his Mork.

1958 — Thomas “The Hit Man” Hearns, champion boxer who fought the best of his time, including 10 glorious minutes of ferocity against Marvin Hagler that is still hard to believe.

1960 — Jean-Claude Van Damme, actor, more or less.

1984 — Lindsay Vonn, American skier and Olympian.

This Day in Music

1957 — Paul McCartney makes his debut with The Quarry Men, a band led by John Lennon. They thought it might be an idea to write some tunes together.

1966 — The Jimi Hendrix Experience play for the first time as a band, opening for French singer Johnny Hallyday. Everyone has to start somewhere.

1968 — John Lennon and Yoko Ono are charged with obstruction after police find cannabis in an apartment they're renting. A lot happened since The Quarry Men.

1979 — The Buggles are No. 1 with Video Killed the Radio Star, which was the first video ever shown on MTV. Turns out Internet killed the radio star.

2005 — An image of a naked John Lennon curled up with Yoko Ono and taken on the last day of his life by Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone, was named the top magazine cover of the past 40 years.

2013 — Paul McCartney gave an impromptu concert to about 2,000 people at Covent Garden in London. A lot happened since The Quarry Men.

This Day in Film and TV

1922 — The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is founded. Coronation Street was not far behind.

1961 — West Side Story, the film adaptation of the play, is released. It would win an Oscar for Best Picture.

1975 — Simon and Garfunkel reunite on Saturday Night Live to sing My Little Town. They almost got The Beatles, too.

1988 — The sitcom Roseanne premieres on ABC. You know what happened next.

2000 — Demi Moore divorces Bruce Willis after 13 years of marriage. Apparently, she refused to admit that Die Hard is, in fact, a Christmas movie.

2012 — Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are honoured for their work with the fashion label The Row. We don't know why and we're not going to look it up.