1/31/2023 12:01:00 AM Today In History - January 31
The Green Hornet The Green Hornet is an American radio adventure series that debuted in 1936 and introduced the character of the Green Hornet, a masked vigilante. The series originated on January 31, 1936, on WXYZ, the same local Detroit station that originated its companion shows The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon. Beginning April 12, 1938, the station supplied the series to the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and then to NBC Blue and its successors, the Blue Network and ABC Network, from November 16, 1939, through September 8, 1950. It returned from September 10 to December 5, 1952. It was sponsored by General Mills from January to August 1948, and by Orange Crush in its brief 1952 run.
Distinguished by its use of classical music for themes and for bridges between scenes, The Green Hornet was "one of radio's best-known and most distinctive juvenile adventure shows". The series detailed the adventures of Britt Reid, debonair newspaper publisher by day, crime-fighting masked hero at night.
With his faithful valet Kato, Britt Reid, daring young publisher, matches wits with the Underworld, risking his life so that criminals and racketeers within the law may feel its weight by the sting of the Green Hornet! The radio show used Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" as its theme music, blended with a hornet buzz created on a theremin.
Reprinted By Permission From OnThisDay.com
Today in History Our On This Day In History HistoryOrb.com archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of some of them for January 31:
Historical Events
1855 - Western railroads blocked by snow
1861 - State of Louisiana takes over US Mint at New Orleans
1863 - 1st black Civil War regiment, SC Volunteers, mustered into US army
1865 - Congress passes 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in America (121-24)
1865 - Gen Robert E. Lee named Commander-in-Chief of Confederate Armies
1871 - Millions of birds fly over western SF, darkening the sky
1874 - Jesse James gang robs train at Gads Hill, Missouri
1930 - 1st US glider flight from a dirigible, Lakehurst, NJ
1936 - "Green Hornet" radio show is 1st heard on WXYZ Radio in Detroit
1948 - Magnetic tape recorder developed by Wireway
1949 - 1st daytime soap on TV "These Are My Children" (NBC in Chicago)
1950 - President Harry Truman publicly announces development of H-bomb
1955 - RCA demonstrates 1st music synthesizer
1957 - Liz Taylor's 2nd divorce (Michael Wilding)
1957 - Eight people on the ground in Pacoima, California are killed following the mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet.
1958 - "Jackpot Bowling" premieres on NBC with Leo Durocher as host
1958 - James van Allen discovers radiation belt
1958 - US launches their 1st artificial satellite, Explorer 1
1961 - Ham is 1st primate in space (158 miles) aboard Mercury/Redstone 2
1964 - US report "Smoking & Health" connects smoking to lung cancer
1968 - Viet Cong Tet offensive begins
1970 - Grateful Dead members busted on LSD charges
1971 - "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison hit #1 on UK pop chart
1971 - Apollo 14 launched, 1st landing in lunar highlands
1971 - US female Figure Skating championship won by Janet Lynn
1971 - US male Figure Skating championship won by John Misha Petkevich
1972 - Aretha Franklin sings at Mahalia Jackson's funeral
1974 - McDonald's founder Ray Kroc buys San Diego Padres
1975 - Barry Manilow's "Mandy" goes gold
1975 - John Lennon releases "#9 Dream"
1975 - UCLA wins NCAA basketball championship
1976 - "Love Rollercoaster" by Ohio Players hits #1
1982 - US male Figure Skating championship won by Scott Hamilton
1984 - Edwin Newman retires from NBC News after 35 years with the network
1988 - Super Bowl XXII: Wash Redskins beat Denver Broncos, 42-10 in San Diego Super Bowl MVP: Doug Williams, Washington, QB
1990 - 1st McDonalds in Russia opens in Moscow, world's biggest McDonalds
1993 - Super Bowl XXVII: Dallas Cowboys beat Buffalo Bills, 52-17 in Pasadena Super Bowl MVP: Troy Aikman, Dallas, QB
1995 - President Bill Clinton authorizes a $20 billion loan to Mexico to stabilize its economy.
2000 - Alaska Airlines flight 261 MD-83, experiencing horizontal stabilizer problems, crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California, killing all 88 persons aboard.
Famous Birthdays
1734 - Robert Morris, merchant (signed Declaration of Independence)
1797 - Franz Peter Schubert, Lichtenthal Austria, composer (Unfinished Symphony)
1798 - Karl Gottlieb Reissiger, composer
1810 - Daniel Ruggles, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1897
1812 - John Randolph Tucker, Capt (Confederate Navy), died in 1883)
1818 - William Raine Peck, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1871
1820 - William B. Washburn, 28th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1887)
1857 - George Jackson Churchward, Great Western Railway Chief mechanical engineer. (d. 1933)
1863 - F Henri Berz, French existensialist philosopher (Revue the Synthesis)
1865 - Henri Desgrange, Founder of the Tour-de-France (d. 1940)
1866 - Emil Strauss, Germany, writer (Naked Man)
1868 - Theodore William Richards, chemist (atomic weights, Nobel-1914)
1872 - Zane Grey, American West novelist (Riders of the Purple Sage)
1881 - Joseph A Cushman, US, palaentologist
1882 - Anna Pavlova, St Petersburg Russia, ballerina/choreographer
1892 - Eddie Cantor, NYC, comedian (Eddie Cantor Comedy Theater)
1903 - Tallulah Bankhead, Huntsville Ala, actress (Lifeboat, Die Die Darling)
1970 - Minnie Driver, London, United Kingdom, British actress and singer-songwriter (Good Will Hunting, The Riches)
1978 - Brad Rutter, Jeopardy! Champion
1981 - Justin Timberlake, Memphis, Tennessee, singer-songwriter (Sexyback, My Love)
Famous Weddings
1560 - Spanish king Philip II marries Elisabeth van Valois
1842 - 10th US President John Tyler's daughter Elizabeth marries in White House
1960 - Songwriter Adolph Green marries actress/singer Phyllis Newman in NYC
1974 - "The Outlaw" actress Jane Russell (52) weds real-estate broker John Calvin People (45) in Santa Barbara, California
2009 - "Stay" singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb (40) weds Late Night with Conan O'Brien music supervisor Roey Hershkovitz (30) at Manhattan restaurant in New York City
Famous Deaths
1606 - Guy Fawkes, convicted in the "Gunpowder Plot", executed at 35
1788 - [Bonnie Prince Charlie] Charles E Stuart, English pretender to the throne, dies at 67
1790 - Thomas Lewis, Irish-born Virginia settler (b. 1718)
1954 - Edwin H Armstrong, US radio inventor (FM), commits suicide at 63
1954 - Florence Bates, actress (Kismet, I Remember Mama), dies at 65
1967 - Chief Thundercloud, actor (Ambush, Colt 45, Typhoon), dies at 100
1974 - Samuel Goldwyn, Polish/English/US film magnate (MGM), dies at 91
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