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| On this date in: | |
| 1789 | North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. |
| 1877 | Inventor Thomas A. Edison unveiled the phonograph. |
| 1922 | Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. |
| 1969 | The Senate voted down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth. |
| 1973 | President Richard Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate. |
| 1980 | A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas killed 87 people. |
| 1985 | Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested, accused of spying for Israel. (He later pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.) |
| 1989 | The proceedings of Britain's House of Commons were televised live for the first time. |
| 1991 | The U.N. Security Council chose Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt to be secretary-general. |
| 1995 | The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 5,000 for the first time. |
| 2000 | The Florida Supreme Court granted Democrat Al Gore's request to keep the presidential election recount going. |
| 2001 | Ottilie Lundgren, a 94-year-old resident of Oxford, Conn., died of inhalation anthrax. The source of the anthrax has never been determined. |
| 2002 | NATO sought to expand its membership into the borders of the former Soviet Union as it invited seven former communist countries to join the alliance: Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria. |
| 2004 | Donald Trump's casino empire filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. |
| 2004 | The NBA suspended Indiana's Ron Artest for the rest of the season following a brawl in the stands during a game against the Detroit Pistons. |
| 2005 | Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon broke away from the hardline Likud with the intention of forming a new party. |
| 2007 | Officials announced the recall of more than a half-million pieces of Chinese-made children's jewelry contaminated with lead. |
Article of the day
Millions tune in to find out who shot J.R.
On this day in 1980, 350 million people around the world tune in to television's popular primetime drama "Dallas" to find out who shot J.R. Ewing, the character fans loved to hate. J.R. had been shot on the season-ending episode the previous March 21, which now stands as one of television's most famous cliffhangers. The plot twist inspired widespread media coverage and left America wondering "Who shot J.R.?" for the next eight months. The November 21 episode solved the mystery, identifying Kristin Shepard, J.R.'s wife's sister and his former mistress, as the culprit.
The CBS television network debuted the first five-episode pilot season of "Dallas" in 1978; it went on to run for another 12 full-length seasons. The first show of its kind, "Dallas" was dubbed a "primetime soap opera" for its serial plots and dramatic tales of moral excess. The show revolved around the relations of two Texas oil families: the wealthy, successful Ewing family and the perpetually down-on-their-luck Barnes family. The families' patriarchs, Jock Ewing and Digger Barnes, were former partners locked in a years-long feud over oil fields Barnes claimed had been stolen by Ewing. Ewing's youngest son Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and Barnes' daughter Pam (Victoria Principal) had married, linking the battling clans even more closely. The character of J.R. Ewing, Bobby's oldest brother and a greedy, conniving, womanizing scoundrel, was played by Larry Hagman.
As J.R. had many enemies, audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for his attempted murder. That summer, the question "Who Shot J.R.?" entered the national lexicon, becoming a popular t-shirt slogan, and heightening anticipation of the soap's third season, which was to air in the fall. After a much-talked-about contract dispute with Hagman was finally settled, the season was delayed because of a Screen Actors Guild strike, much to the dismay of "Dallas" fans. When it finally aired, the episode revealing J.R.'s shooter became one of television's most watched shows, with an audience of 83 million people in the U.S. alone--a full 76 percent of all U.S. televisions on that night were tuned in--and helped put "Dallas" into greater worldwide circulation. It also popularized the use of the cliffhanger by television writers.
The shooting of J.R. wasn't "Dallas'" only notorious plot twist. In September 1986, fans learned that the entire previous season, in which main character Bobby Ewing had died, was merely a dream of Pam's. The show's writers had killed the Bobby character off because Duffy had decided to leave the show. When he agreed to return, they featured him stepping out of the shower on the season-ending cliffhanger, and then were forced the next season to explain his sudden reappearance.
The last premiere episode of "Dallas" aired on May 3, 1991. A spin-off, "Knots Landing," aired from December 27, 1979 until May 13, 1993. "Dallas" remains in syndication around the world.Today Birthdays
| Dr. John turns 68 years old today. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 AP Photo/Dave Martin Musician Dr. John turns 68 years old today.
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