Fun Facts

1861: Texas, a U.S. state for only 16 years, voted to secede from the Union.

1887: Harvey Wilcox of Kansas started selling off 120 acres he owned in Southern California as a real estate development. His wife, Daeida, named it Hollywood.

1920: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Mounties, were created.

1940: Frank Sinatra sang "Too Romantic" and "The Sky Fell Down" in his first recording session with the Tommy Dorsey Band. Frank replaced Jack Leonard as the band's lead singer.

1949: RCA Victor introduced the 45, a smaller record with a larger hole than the long-play 33-and-a-third disc introduced earlier by Columbia Records.

1954: Edwin Armstrong leaped to his death from his Manhattan apartment. He had invented stereo FM radio, but AM broadcasters had kept his patents tied up in court.

1963: 17-year-old Neil Young performed his first paying gig at a Winnipeg country club.

1964: The governor of Indiana declared the Kingsmen's hit "Louie Louie" was pornographic. He asked the state's radio stations not to play it.

1974: The first mass-marketed doll for boys was introduced. Hasbro sold G.I. Joe for $2.49. The action figure's name came from the 1945 film "The Story of G.I. Joe," which starred Robert Mitchum and Burgess Meredith.

1977: In Roxboro, N.C., Hillside shutout Person 2-0 in history’s lowest scoring high school basketball game. Person, with a much shorter team, stalled the entire game and missed its final shot.

1980: The daytime soap opera "Love of Life" ended a 28-year run on CBS so that "The Young & The Restless" could expand to a full hour each weekday.

1982: ''Late Night with David Letterman'' premiered on NBC-TV.

1994: Skater Tonya Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to plan the January 6th attack on skater Nancy Kerrigan.

2001: Sparks generated by bottom static may have caused two gas station fires in Hannibal, Missouri. Experts think the energy built up when drivers slid from their seats and sparks flew from their fingers. Nobody was hurt but both cars were burned. A fire department spokesman said static should be removed by touching the car's body before picking up the pump handle.

2003: A Taiwanese man who suffered from a severe cough for many years was cured when surgeons removed a sewing needle from his back. The man could not recall ever feeling a needle sticking him in the back, but his wife said she had lost a needle on their bed several years earlier. Doctors said the needle irritated the man's lungs.

2004: During the Super Bowl halftime show, in what was termed a "wardrobe malfunction," singer Janet Jacksonwas exposed, resulting in a $550,000 fine against CBS' parent company, Viacom.

2006: A 100-pound woman ate 26 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes at a New York restaurant to win the World Grilled Cheese Eating Championship. Sonya Thomas won $8,000 but said she was disappointed in her performance. She wanted to eat 30 sandwiches. Thomas held other eating records, including 46 dozen oysters in 10 minutes, 11 pounds of cheesecake in 9 minutes, 48 chicken tacos in 11 minutes, and 37 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes.

2007:　 Antonio Vasconcelos, born in Cancun, Mexico, was an enormous 22 inches long and weighed 14 and-a-half pounds!　 "Super Tonio" had to wear diapers designed for 6-month-olds.　 Doctors said he was relatively healthy, but his blood sugar was higher than the average newborn.

QUICKIE FUN FACT

You are moving into a new home. According to early American folklore, you must not carry furniture into the house before the salt and pepper are on the shelf.