■ The Pop Edition
November 29: I Want to Hold Your Hand, Pong Ships
November 29 has a Beatles single that arrived with a million orders already placed, a bar-room video game that outgrew its quarter bucket, and a birthday list that runs from Baltimore comedy to Wakanda. It also holds a few quieter entries, including the birth of the author who gave the world Narnia. Here is the full accounting, starting with the song that changed the Beatles’ fortunes abroad.
ON THE CHARTS: I Want to Hold Your Hand
On November 29, 1963, EMI’s Parlophone label released “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in the United Kingdom, and more than a million copies had already been ordered in advance. It was also the first Beatles record made on a four-track machine at Abbey Road, which gave the band room to layer sound in ways their earlier sessions couldn’t.
The recording session took place on October 17, 1963, in Studio Two. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the song together, working at a piano in the basement of the Asher family home in London, where McCartney was staying as Jane Asher’s boyfriend. The British B-side was “This Boy.”
The record climbed to No. 1 in Britain in December. America took longer. Capitol Records had passed on earlier Beatles singles, but it moved up the release of this one after American disc jockeys began playing imported copies. It reached shops on December 26, 1963, and topped the Billboard Hot 100 on the chart dated February 1, 1964, shortly before the band’s Ed Sullivan Show appearance.
UK release: Nov. 29, 1963 · Recorded: Oct. 17, 1963 · Billboard No. 1: Feb. 1, 1964
Born On This Day
Anna Faris
BORN 1976 · TURNS 50
Born in Baltimore, Faris broke out as Cindy Campbell in the first Scary Movie in 2000 and returned for three sequels. She showed her range in Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain, then carried the comedy The House Bunny in 2008. She later starred opposite Allison Janney in the CBS sitcom Mom, which ran from 2013 to 2021.
Don Cheadle
BORN 1964 · TURNS 62
Cheadle made his name in character roles, from Devil in a Blue Dress to Boogie Nights, before earning an Oscar nomination for Hotel Rwanda. He joined the Ocean’s franchise, then spent a decade in the Marvel films as James Rhodes.
Howie Mandel
BORN 1955 · TURNS 71
Mandel moved from stand-up to the hospital drama St. Elsewhere in the 1980s and voiced the cartoon Bobby’s World. He later became a fixture as the host of Deal or No Deal and a judge on America’s Got Talent.
Joel Coen
BORN 1954 · TURNS 72
Coen and his brother Ethan began with the thriller Blood Simple in 1984, then built a body of work including Fargo, The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men. The pair shared Oscars for the Fargo screenplay and for No Country for Old Men.
Chadwick Boseman
BORN 1976 · WOULD HAVE BEEN 50
Boseman played Jackie Robinson in 42 and James Brown in Get on Up before becoming T’Challa in Black Panther in 2018. He died in 2020, and his final film performance, in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, earned him a posthumous Oscar nomination.
PRESS START: Pong
Atari released Pong on November 29, 1972, and the game’s origin was a small deception. Nolan Bushnell told his new engineer, Allan Alcorn, that General Electric had commissioned a simple tennis game, when the project was really just a warm-up exercise to get Alcorn used to the work.
Alcorn built it anyway, with two paddles, a ball and a score. A prototype went into Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, and the story goes that it broke down because the coin bucket had overflowed with quarters. That convinced Atari the game could earn money, and a commercial run followed.
Pong wasn’t the first video game to cost a coin. Computer Space had come before it, and the Magnavox Odyssey had a tennis game that Bushnell had played. But Pong was simple enough for a bar crowd to learn in seconds, and it made Atari a company. A home version followed in 1975, sold through Sears for the holidays, and brought arcade-style play into living rooms.
Meanwhile…
1832Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Her semi-autobiographical novel has been filmed many times.
1898C.S. Lewis, creator of The Chronicles of Narnia, was born in Belfast.
1918Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, was born in New York City.
1963The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” went on sale in Britain, with a seven-figure order book behind it.
1986Cary Grant died at 82 in Davenport, Iowa, where he was preparing for a speaking appearance. He had starred in North by Northwest and Bringing Up Baby.
2001On November 29, 2001, 25 years ago today, George Harrison died at age 58 in Los Angeles. The Beatles guitarist had also built a solo career that included All Things Must Pass.
That’s November 29: a record that opened America to the Beatles, a paddle game that opened the arcades, and a good run of birthdays. Come back tomorrow afternoon for the next date in pop culture history, and forward this to someone who still remembers the sound of a Pong bounce.