Today in History: Thursday, April 18. 2024

Television
In 1966, “The 38^th Annual Academy Awards” was the first Oscars ceremony to be broadcast in color. The winner that year for Best Picture was “The Sound of Music”…“Real People,” a combination of comedy, reality and talk, debuted on NBC in 1979. It aired for five seasons and the regular hosts included Sarah Purcell, Byron Allen, John Barbour, Skip Stephenson, Bill Rafferty, Mark Russell, Peter Billingsley and Fred Willard…”Rescue 911” debuted on CBS in 1989. The informational docudrama, which was hosted by William Shatner and mostly featured re-enactments of emergencies, ran for seven seasons.

News
An earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, shook the town of San Francisco, California in 1906. Thirty thousand homes were either partially or wholly destroyed and an estimated 3,000 are reported dead. The earthquake set off a series of fires which swept through the city.

Sports
The first baseball game was played at Yankee Stadium in New York City in 1923, with the Yankees beating the Boston Red Sox 4-1.

Periodicals
In 1924, Simon and Schuster, Inc. published the first “Crossword Puzzle Book.“

Celebrity Birthdays
Actress Hayley Mills is 78; actor James Woods is 77; actress Dorothy Lyman (“Mama’s Family”) is also 77; actress Rick Moranis (“Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”) is 71; actor Eric Roberts is 68; actress Melody Thomas Scott (“The Young and the Restless”) is 68; actress John James (“Dynasty”) is 68; actress Jane Leeves (“Frasier”) is 63; Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham is 62; Conan O’Brien is 61; actor Eric McCormack (“Will & Grace”) is 61; actress Maria Bello (“NCIS”) is 57; actor David Tennant (“Doctor Who”) is 53; actress Melissa Joan Hart (“Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”) is 48; reality star Kourtney Kardashian is 45; “Superstore” star America Ferrara is 40; actress Vanessa Kirby (“The Crown”) is 36; actress Alia Shawkat (“Arrested Development”) is 35; actress Britt Robertson (“Under the Dome”) is 34.

Did You Know?
The fictional “Cloud 9” retail store on NBC’s “Superstore” has also been featured on comedy “The Mindy Project” and NBC’s recently introduced “Good Girls.”