November 6: A Verdict for Russell Brand

Dec. 2, 2020: The United Kingdom Becomes the First Western Nation to Authorize a COVID-19 Vaccine With a regulatory green light for the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, Britain turned a year of lockdowns and loss toward a new kind of waiting: the wait for a needle. On Dec. 2, 2020, the UK's medicines regulator, the MHRA, granted temporary authorization to the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. It was the first time a Western country had approved a fully tested COVID-19 vaccine for public use, and it came barely eleven months after the virus first appeared in the news. The Green Light   The decision followed a rolling review of data from the companies' large Phase 3 trial, which had reported roughly 95 percent efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19. The regulator's approval allowed the shot to be supplied under temporary authorization, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the news on social media, calling it incredible. The vaccine was built on messenger RNA, a technology that had never before been used in an approved vaccine for the public. Researchers had spent years refining it in relative obscurity, and now it had gone from laboratory promise to government approval in a stretch of months that vaccine specialists once would have considered impossible. The approval also set off an unusual bit of international jostling. Other countries, whose regulators were still deep in their own reviews, now had to explain why a rival had reached the finish line first. For a pandemic that had made borders, schedules and ordinary life feel unmovable, the speed of the paperwork was, in its own way, a small shock. The first people in Britain to be vaccinated would not have to wait long. On Dec. 8, Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old woman in Coventry, became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech shot outside a clinical trial, in a hospital that had been turned into one of the country's first vaccination hubs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration followed with its own emergency use authorization on Dec. 11, and other nations soon joined in. The approval did not end the pandemic; cases and deaths kept climbing through the winter, and supplies were limited at first. But it changed the shape of the story. After months in which the most hopeful news was a downward curve on a chart, the headline now involved something people could actually roll up a sleeve for. The most anticipated science of the year arrived not with fanfare, but with a regulatory notice.  

■  The Pop Edition December 2: One Sweet Day Debuts, Versace Is Born Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men entered the Hot 100 at No. 1 on this date in 1995, Gianni Versace was born in 1946, and Britney Spears turns 45 today. Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men, whose duet entered the Hot 100 at No. 1 in 1995 December 2: One Sweet Day Debuts, Versace Is BornDecember 2 is a date for ballads and bold design. In 1995, a Mariah Carey duet entered the Hot 100 at the very top and then refused to leave for months. In 1946, a tailor's son was born in southern Italy who would later put a mythological monster on everything from handbags to red carpets. And Britney Spears turns 45, which is its own kind of anniversary for anyone who remembers a schoolgirl uniform. ON THE CHARTS: One Sweet Day On the Billboard Hot 100 dated December 2, 1995, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's “One Sweet Day” entered the chart at No. 1. It was a duet between a pop star and the group that had spent much of the early ’90s on top of R&B radio, and it arrived as the lead track from Carey's album Daydream, co-written with Walter Afanasieff and the members of Boyz II Men.It did not just debut well. It stayed at No. 1 for 16 weeks, a record at the time for the longest run at the top of the Hot 100. Carey has said the song was inspired in part by the death of her friend David Cole of the group C+C Music Factory, which gave a polished ballad its emotional weight. Radio programmers, who rarely agree on anything, gave it heavy rotation through the winter.Debuted at No. 1 · Hot 100 dated Dec. 2, 1995 · 16 weeks on topThe duet became a fixture at memorials and funerals, which is a strange fate for a chart-topper but explains why it still gets requested nearly three decades on. It is now 31 years old.  Born On This DayBritney SpearsBorn 1981 · Turns 45Born in Mississippi and raised in Louisiana, she appeared on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club as a teenager before her debut single, “...Baby One More Time,” made her a global pop star in 1998. Hits like “Toxic” and “Oops!... I Did It Again” defined the pop sound of the 2000s, and she later headlined a long Las Vegas residency.Lucy LiuBorn 1968 · Turns 58She broke through as Ling Woo on Ally McBeal, then became a movie star in Charlie's Angels and as O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. She has also worked as a director and a visual artist.Monica SelesBorn 1973 · Turns 53The tennis star won nine Grand Slam singles titles and was known for her two-handed strokes on both sides and her grunting, which became a running topic in the sport.Nelly FurtadoBorn 1978 · Turns 48The Canadian singer broke out with “I'm Like a Bird,” which won a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She reinvented herself in 2006 with the Timbaland-produced album Loose and the No. 1 hit “Promiscuous.”Aaron RodgersBorn 1983 · Turns 43The quarterback was MVP of Super Bowl XLV with the Green Bay Packers and won four NFL MVP awards, turning his career into a long run of highlight-reel throws.   THE LOOK: Gianni VersaceGianni Versace was born December 2, 1946, in Reggio Calabria, Italy, and his house's emblem is a Medusa head, the snake-haired figure from Greek myth. He chose it because, he said, people who look at her can't look away. That logo, in gold, became one of the most recognizable marks in fashion.His mother was a dressmaker, and he learned the trade in her shop before moving to Milan in the 1970s. He launched his own label in 1978 and built it on saturated color, baroque prints and metal-mesh gowns. In the 1990s he pushed fashion into the celebrity spotlight by seating stars in his front rows and putting supermodels on the same runway as pop musicians.He was killed in July 1997, and his sister Donatella took over the house. Had he lived, he would have been 80 today.   Meanwhile…1995On December 2, 1995, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's “One Sweet Day” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 1.1927Ford's Model A went on sale on December 2, 1927, replacing the Model T after 19 years and drawing crowds to showrooms.1923Opera soprano Maria Callas was born December 2, 1923, in New York City. She would have been 103; she died in 1977.1946Gianni Versace was born, giving fashion its Medusa-crowned empire.1981Britney Spears was born in McComb, Mississippi, which makes her 45 today.1978Nelly Furtado was born in Victoria, British Columbia. That is December 2: a ballad that owned the winter of 1995, a designer who made excess look like art, and a pop star who is 45. Come back tomorrow afternoon for another date, another stack of songs, screens and strange facts.

Dec. 1, 2009: After Years of Rejection and Delay, the Lisbon Treaty Takes Effect and the European Union Gets a New Set of Rules A treaty once left for dead after an Irish "no" quietly became law, handing the EU a permanent president and a new foreign-policy chief. On Dec. 1, 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force, closing out a decade of institutional wrangling inside the European Union. There were no parades. The change arrived as a calendar turnover, and it rewired how 27 member states made decisions. The Long Road   The treaty had been signed in Lisbon on Dec. 13, 2007, after the failure of a more ambitious EU constitution that French and Dutch voters had rejected in 2005. Lisbon was meant to be the leaner replacement, a set of amendments to existing treaties rather than a grand founding document. It still needed ratification in every member state, and Ireland, the only country to put it to a popular vote, rejected it in June 2008. Brussels was left with a treaty that could not take effect. Ireland held a second referendum in October 2009, after securing assurances on issues such as taxation and neutrality, and voters approved it by a wide margin. The Czech Republic was the last holdout. President Václav Klaus, a prominent critic of the treaty, signed it on Nov. 3, 2009, only after the Czech Constitutional Court cleared it. After more than two years of stalling, the final obstacle was a signature. With the treaty in force, the EU created two new jobs. Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, chosen by national leaders at a Brussels dinner on Nov. 19, became the first full-time President of the European Council. Britain's Catherine Ashton became the High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy. Both appointments surprised many observers, who had expected bigger names. The treaty also expanded the European Parliament's powers and changed voting rules among governments. Its most famous provision may be Article 50, which set out for the first time how a member state could leave the Union. It looked like a procedural footnote in 2009. Seven years later, the United Kingdom would invoke it.  

■  The Pop Edition December 1: Pistols Hit Live TV, Jorgensen Makes News The Sex Pistols went on live British TV 50 years ago today, a newspaper front page introduced Christine Jorgensen in 1952, and Bette Midler turns 81. Here is the full December 1 accounting. The Sex Pistols, who appeared on Thames Television's Today show on December 1, 1976, in a London studio. December 1 has a way of turning one evening into a cultural fault line. In 1976, a teatime interview show in London gave a young punk band its first national audience and a week of front-page outrage. In 1952, a New York tabloid put a name and a story on its cover that readers had never seen printed that way. Today also belongs to Bette Midler, who turns 81, and to a handful of comedians and musicians who all share the date. PRIME TIME: The Sex Pistols on Today   On December 1, 1976, the Sex Pistols appeared on Thames Television's early-evening magazine show Today, hosted by Bill Grundy. They were only there because Queen cancelled: Freddie Mercury's dental appointment forced the band out, and EMI offered its new signing as a replacement. That was 50 years ago today. The band arrived with a few friends from their circle, including Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin. Grundy, who seemed unimpressed, goaded the group to say something outrageous. Guitarist Steve Jones obliged with a stream of expletives, on live television before the evening's children's viewing had really ended. Grundy also made a leering remark to Siouxsie Sioux on air. The switchboard lit up, and the next morning the Daily Mirror ran the headline “The Filth and the Fury!” Grundy was suspended for two weeks, and many dates on the band's Anarchy tour were cancelled by councils. EMI dropped the group in January 1977. Their single “Anarchy in the UK” had come out only days earlier, on November 26, and the scandal made them known to people who had never heard it. Replaced: Queen · Host: Bill Grundy · Aired: Dec. 1, 1976   Born On This Day Bette Midler BORN 1945 · TURNS 81 Born in Honolulu, Midler started out singing in New York's Continental Baths and won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1973 on the strength of her debut, The Divine Miss M. She earned an Oscar nomination for The Rose, scored a pop standard with “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and became a cult favorite as Winifred Sanderson in Hocus Pocus. She later won a Tony for Hello, Dolly! on Broadway. Sarah Silverman BORN 1970 · TURNS 56 Silverman wrote for Saturday Night Live for a single season in 1993–94, then built a stand-up career on deliberately provocative material. She starred in Comedy Central's The Sarah Silverman Program and voiced Vanellope von Schweetz in Wreck-It Ralph and its sequel. Janelle Monáe BORN 1985 · TURNS 41 Monáe came out of Kansas City and Atlanta's Wondaland collective with the concept album The ArchAndroid in 2010. In 2016 she turned to film with Hidden Figures and Moonlight, and in 2018 she released Dirty Computer. She has since appeared in Glass Onion. Zoë Kravitz BORN 1988 · TURNS 38 Kravitz broke out as Toast in Mad Max: Fury Road and in HBO's Big Little Lies, led the High Fidelity series, and played Selina Kyle in The Batman. She made her feature directing debut with Blink Twice in 2024.   THE MOMENT: Christine Jorgensen On December 1, 1952, the New York Daily News put Christine Jorgensen on its front page under the headline “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty.” The story rested on letters she had sent home to her parents in the Bronx from Copenhagen, where she was undergoing medical treatment. She had not chosen to announce herself to the world; the paper had the letter and ran it. Born George Jorgensen Jr. in 1926, she had served in the U.S. Army and traveled to Denmark for hormone therapy and surgery under Dr. Christian Hamburger. Her story spread through papers around the world within days, in terms that now read as sensational, and it became one of the biggest celebrity stories of the early 1950s. When she returned to New York in February 1953, press crowded the airport. Rather than retreat, Jorgensen turned the attention into a career as a nightclub performer, actress and lecturer, and she spoke publicly for decades. She died in 1989 and is often cited as the first American to become widely known for gender transition, years before the language to discuss it was widespread.   Meanwhile… 1940Richard Pryor was born on December 1 in Peoria, Illinois. He went on to remake stand-up comedy with raw, autobiographical routines and died in 2005. 1933Lou Rawls, the baritone behind “You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,” was born in Chicago on December 1. He died in 2006. 1944John Densmore, drummer for The Doors, was born on December 1. He turns 82. 1946Gilbert O'Sullivan, the singer-songwriter of “Alone Again (Naturally),” was born on December 1. He turns 80. 1951Treat Williams, star of Hair and Everwood, was born on December 1. He died in 2023. 1982Riz Ahmed, who won an Emmy for The Night Of and an Oscar for the short film The Long Goodbye, was born on December 1. He turns 44. One date, two very different kinds of headline: a band that wanted to be noticed and a woman whose story was told for her. Both changed what a front page or a teatime slot could carry. Come back tomorrow for another day's worth of pop culture history.

Nov. 30, 2004: Ken Jennings's 74-Game Jeopardy! Streak Ends on a Question About Tax Preparers After 74 wins and more than $2.5 million, the quiz show's most famous champion finally met a Final Jeopardy clue he couldn't answer. On Nov. 30, 2004, a Jeopardy! episode that had been taped months earlier aired and ended one of the longest runs in game show history. Ken Jennings, a software engineer from Utah, had become a nightly fixture in living rooms across America. That night, his streak came to an end. The Streak Ends   Jennings first appeared on the show in the summer of 2004 and kept winning, week after week, as Jeopardy! lifted its long-standing five-game limit for champions. By the time his run ended, he had won 74 consecutive games and accumulated more than $2.5 million in winnings. The show's ratings climbed along with his streak, and Jennings became a minor celebrity whose face was familiar to millions who had never met him. Because the programs were taped in advance, the outcome was a closely guarded secret, and viewers tuned in each night not knowing when, or whether, the winning would stop. For months, the question was not whether Jennings knew the answers, but whether anyone could outlast the man who seemed to know all of them. His final game came against Nancy Zerg, a real estate agent from California. Heading into Final Jeopardy, the category was Business and Industry, and the clue described the company that employed more than 12,000 tax preparers in the United States. Jennings wrote, "What is FedEx?" The correct response was H&R Block. Zerg answered correctly, and Jennings finished second. He later added a wry note to his wrong answer on the screen: "I for one welcome our new computer overlords," a line he had written for a different reason in a later contest. The man who had answered thousands of clues was undone by a question about taxes, which, as it happens, most Americans must answer for themselves every spring.  

■  The Pop Edition November 30: Thriller Drops, Jennings Loses Michael Jackson's Thriller reached stores on November 30, 1982, and Ken Jennings's Jeopardy! streak ended in 2004. Plus Ben Stiller turns 61, with Billy Idol, Kaley Cuoco and more. Michael Jackson's Thriller, released in the US on November 30, 1982, became a landmark album. November 30 is the date a record that reshaped pop music arrived in stores, and the date a game show champion finally ran out of answers. It is also a birthday for a comedy director, a punk-era rocker, and two of the most widely read authors in English. Here is the full accounting, starting with an album that spent most of 1983 at the top. ON THE CHARTS: Thriller   Michael Jackson's Thriller reached US stores on November 30, 1982, 44 years ago today, as the follow-up to Off the Wall. Producer Quincy Jones guided the sessions again, and the guest list was unusually deep: Paul McCartney sang on The Girl Is Mine, and Eddie Van Halen played the guitar solo on Beat It. It did not explode overnight. The album climbed through early 1983, and then Billie Jean and Beat It turned it into a fixture. Thriller eventually spent 37 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and produced seven Top 10 singles, a first for a single album at that point. The visuals pushed it further. The Billie Jean clip helped break down MTV's reluctance to play Black artists, and the Thriller short film premiered on December 2, 1983. At the 1984 Grammys, Jackson won eight awards, a record for one night at the time. The album is still routinely listed among the best-selling of all time. 37 weeks at No. 1 · 7 Top 10 singles · 8 Grammys   Born On This Day Ben Stiller BORN 1965 · TURNS 61 The son of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Stiller won an Emmy for writing on The Ben Stiller Show in the early 1990s. He directed Reality Bites, then built a run as actor and director with Zoolander, Meet the Parents and Tropic Thunder. More recently he directed much of the Apple TV+ drama Severance. Billy Idol BORN 1955 · TURNS 71 Born William Broad, he started in the London punk band Generation X before going solo and becoming an MTV regular in the 1980s. White Wedding, Rebel Yell and Eyes Without a Face made him a fixture on radio and video. Clay Aiken BORN 1978 · TURNS 48 Aiken finished as runner-up on the second season of American Idol in 2003, then topped the Billboard 200 with his debut album, Measure of a Man. He later moved into Broadway, including Spamalot. Elisha Cuthbert BORN 1982 · TURNS 44 The Canadian actor became a household name as Kim Bauer on 24, then moved through film, including The Girl Next Door and House of Wax, and television comedy with Happy Endings. Kaley Cuoco BORN 1985 · TURNS 41 Cuoco began on 8 Simple Rules, then spent 12 seasons as Penny on The Big Bang Theory. She went on to star in and produce the HBO Max thriller The Flight Attendant.   PRIME TIME: Ken Jennings On the Jeopardy! episode that aired November 30, 2004, Ken Jennings's 74-game winning streak ended, and a Final Jeopardy question about H&R Block did it. Asked about a firm whose seasonal white-collar workforce mostly works four months a year, Jennings wrote Fed Ex. Challenger Nancy Zerg had the right response and the win. The streak had run since the summer and turned a software engineer from Utah into a national figure. Jennings won more than $2.5 million in regular play, a record at the time, and the show's ratings climbed along with it. Viewers watched not just for the clues but for whether anyone could beat him. His loss did not end his Jeopardy! story. He won the 2011 man-versus-machine match against IBM's Watson, with a memorable note on his screen about welcoming the computer overlords, and in 2020 he began a long run as a host of the show.   Meanwhile… 1835On November 30, 1835, Samuel Clemens, who would write as Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri. 1667Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, was born in Dublin on November 30, 1667. 1874Lucy Maud Montgomery, creator of Anne of Green Gables, was born on Prince Edward Island on November 30, 1874. 1979Pink Floyd's double album The Wall was released in the UK on November 30, 1979; the US release followed days later. 1962Bo Jackson was born November 30, 1962, in Bessemer, Alabama. He later won the Heisman Trophy and starred in Nike's “Bo Knows” ads. 2004Ken Jennings's Jeopardy! run ended with the episode that aired November 30, 2004, after 74 consecutive wins. From a 1982 album that kept producing hits for more than a year to a game show loss that made its champion more famous, November 30 shows how big pop moments often begin with one release or one wrong answer. Tomorrow brings a new date and new stories.

On Nov. 29, 2009, Tiger Woods' Early-Morning Car Crash Outside His Florida Home Halted the Most Dominant Run in Modern Golf A single-vehicle accident on a quiet Florida street ended a season of triumph and began a long public unraveling for sport's most guarded superstar. Thanksgiving weekend, 2009, was supposed to be quiet for Tiger Woods. He was the world's top-ranked golfer, a winner of 70 PGA Tour events, and an athlete whose private life had been walled off from public view for more than a decade. Then, in the early hours of Nov. 27, a crash outside his Windermere, Florida, home began a story that unfolded over the following days and reached a turning point on Nov. 29. The Hydrant   Florida Highway Patrol reported that Woods' Cadillac Escalade left his driveway shortly after 2:25 a.m., struck a fire hydrant, and then hit a tree on a neighboring property. Woods was treated for facial lacerations and released. In the first days afterward he declined to meet with troopers, and the lack of explanation became the story itself. Tabloid reports about his personal life multiplied, and the carefully managed image that had helped make him among the most marketable athletes in the world started to come apart. Sponsors, broadcasters, and fellow players all waited for a clear account that did not arrive. By Nov. 29, the Highway Patrol said it would seek a warrant for his medical records after he again postponed an interview, a notable escalation for a man whose fame had always depended on control. The event that was supposed to be a minor traffic matter instead drew national attention, and the silence around it proved louder than any statement. The consequences reached well beyond the roadside. On Dec. 2, Woods publicly acknowledged personal failings and apologized on his website, and on Dec. 11 he announced an indefinite break from professional golf. He did not return to competition until the 2010 Masters in April. Companies including Accenture and AT&T later ended their sponsorship deals with him. The crash became a dividing line in his career, separating the years when he seemed unbeatable from those marked by injuries, comebacks, and reinvention. The fire hydrant, an ordinary piece of suburban street furniture, ended up standing between two eras of a career that had seemed unstoppable until a single quiet night.  

■  The Pop Edition November 29: I Want to Hold Your Hand, Pong Ships The Beatles released I Want to Hold Your Hand in Britain 63 years ago, Atari shipped Pong in 1972, and Anna Faris turns 50. Plus Don Cheadle, Howie Mandel and more from November 29. The Beatles in 1963, the year their single I Want to Hold Your Hand reached British shops. 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.

On Nov. 28, 2018, a Chinese scientist walked onto a Hong Kong stage to defend the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies He Jiankui's public account of the CRISPR twins drew gasps, condemnation and a reckoning over who gets to rewrite the human genome. Scientific revolutions usually arrive in peer-reviewed journals. This one arrived in the news first. By Nov. 28, 2018, reports had already claimed that a researcher in Shenzhen had edited the DNA of human embryos and that two girls had been born from them. That afternoon, the man behind the claim had to explain himself to a roomful of his peers. The Hong Kong Stage   The venue was the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the University of Hong Kong, where He Jiankui, then an associate professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, was scheduled to speak. He told the audience that he had used the CRISPR tool to alter a gene called CCR5 in embryos, with the aim of making children resistant to HIV infection. He said the work had produced twin girls, known publicly by the pseudonyms Lulu and Nana, and that a second pregnancy might also be underway. The claim had not been published or independently verified. His university said he had been on unpaid leave since February 2018 and that it had not known about the project. Many scientists in the room had spent years debating whether such an experiment should ever be attempted. They were now hearing that someone had already done it, and that the news had broken before any journal had a chance to weigh in. The reaction was swift. The summit's organizing committee said the next day that the work was irresponsible and failed to conform to international norms, and criticized the lack of transparency around it. Researchers pointed out that the embryos were healthy and that proven ways to protect children from HIV already existed. Chinese authorities opened an investigation, and in December 2019 a court in Shenzhen sentenced He to three years in prison and fined him three million yuan. The technology he used had been celebrated for its precision, but the episode showed that the harder problem was never the cutting. It was deciding, in advance and in public, who gets to hold the scissors.  

■  The Pop Edition November 28: Opry Debuts, Leader of the Pack Hits No. 1 A fiddler in Nashville launched the Grand Ole Opry in 1925, the Shangri-Las reached No. 1 in 1964, and Jon Stewart turns 64. Here is the full accounting of November 28. The Grand Ole Opry stage, descended from a Nashville radio barn dance first aired in 1925. November 28: Opry Debuts, Leader of the Pack Hits No. 1Today's date holds a radio show that outlasted nearly everything else on the air, and a three-minute teenage melodrama with a motorcycle in it. It also holds the birthday of the man who spent sixteen years hosting The Daily Show. Jon Stewart turns 64, and he is the answer to this morning's clues. The rest of the date runs from Nashville in 1925 to the top of the pop charts in 1964. THE MOMENT: The Grand Ole Opry On November 28, 1925, a Nashville radio station put a show on the air that would not leave. The first performer was a 77-year-old fiddler named “Uncle” Jimmy Thompson, who played old tunes for roughly an hour at WSM while announcer George D. Hay introduced him. The program was called the WSM Barn Dance, and it was not yet the Grand Ole Opry.The name came later, in December 1927. The story goes that Hay followed a network program of classical music and joked that listeners had just heard “grand opera” and were about to hear “grand ole opry.” It stuck. WSM was owned by an insurance company, National Life and Accident, and the station was built to draw listeners who might become policyholders. The barn dance did that job so well that it became the point of the station.Over time the show turned into the career ladder of country music. Landing a spot, and later a membership, meant you had arrived in Nashville. It moved through several homes, including the Ryman Auditorium, before settling at its current venue outside the city in 1974. Today, 101 years after that first fiddle tune, it still broadcasts live, which makes it one of the longest-running radio shows in American history.  Born On This DayJon StewartBORN 1962 · TURNS 64Born in New York City, Stewart worked the stand-up circuit and had a short-lived MTV talk show before taking over The Daily Show from Craig Kilborn in 1999. He turned it into the most influential fake-news program on television and hosted it until 2015. He later returned as a Monday host in 2022, and he has kept his hand in film as a writer and director.Ed HarrisBORN 1950 · TURNS 76Harris broke through as astronaut John Glenn in The Right Stuff and earned Oscar nominations for Apollo 13, The Truman Show, Pollock and The Hours. He directed and starred in Pollock, and has more recently played the Man in Black on HBO's Westworld.Randy NewmanBORN 1943 · TURNS 83Newman began as a songwriter in a famous Los Angeles musical family and built a catalog of wry, character-driven songs. He then became Pixar's house composer, writing music for Toy Story and other films, and he has won two Oscars for original song.Paul ShafferBORN 1949 · TURNS 77Born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Shaffer was an early cast member and music director on Saturday Night Live. He then led the band on Late Night with David Letterman and The Late Show, becoming the sidekick every other sidekick was measured against.   ON THE CHARTS: Leader of the PackThe Billboard Hot 100 dated November 28, 1964 put the Shangri-Las at No. 1 with “Leader of the Pack,” a song about a teenage romance that ends in a motorcycle crash. The group was four teenagers from Queens, with Mary Weiss on lead vocals, and it was their only chart-topper.What made it unusual was that it played like a tiny movie. The record used spoken lines and sound effects, including a revving engine, and it was produced by George “Shadow” Morton, who co-wrote it with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. It came out on Red Bird Records, the label started by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller with George Goldner.Radio was not unanimously on board. Its death-by-motorcycle storyline drew complaints, and at least one British broadcaster reportedly kept it off the air for a time. Even so, it sat at the top for one week before the Supremes' “Come See About Me” replaced it, and the song became a defining example of the girl-group era's melodrama. It has been covered and parodied many times since.   Meanwhile…1925On November 28, the WSM Barn Dance went on the air in Nashville, with fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson as its first performer.1929Berry Gordy was born in Detroit. He went on to found Motown Records, the label that launched the Supremes, the Temptations and Stevie Wonder.1946Joe Dante was born in Morristown, New Jersey. He later directed Gremlins and The Howling.1952S. Epatha Merkerson was born in Detroit. She became best known as Lt. Anita Van Buren on Law & Order.1964On November 28, the Shangri-Las' “Leader of the Pack” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the only chart-topper the group ever had.1967Anna Nicole Smith was born in Houston. She became a model and television personality and died in 2007; she would have been 59. One date, two very different ways of getting an audience: a live fiddle on a radio tower in Nashville, and a three-minute record with sound effects. Both worked, and both are still around. Tomorrow's edition brings another date's worth of pop culture history, so come back this afternoon.

On Nov. 27, 2007, a Naval Academy town in Maryland hosted Israeli and Palestinian leaders for a summit meant to restart a peace process that had been dormant for years The Annapolis Conference gathered dozens of governments and set a one-year deadline for a deal that history would not deliver. Annapolis, Maryland, is better known for sailors than for Middle East diplomacy. On Nov. 27, 2007, it became the stage for one of the most ambitious American-led peace efforts of the decade. President George W. Bush welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, along with representatives from dozens of countries and international organizations, including Arab states that had long avoided such gatherings. The Handshake Year   The conference's centerpiece was a short document called the Joint Understanding. Bush read it aloud with Olmert and Abbas at his side. In it, the two sides agreed to begin bilateral negotiations on Dec. 12, 2007, and to make every effort to conclude a peace treaty by the end of 2008. The deadline was the boldest part of the plan, and it was written into the record in front of the cameras. The guest list was nearly as notable as the text. Delegations from across the Arab world sat in the same rooms as Israeli officials, a sign that regional capitals were at least willing to be seen at the table. The summit came after years in which American attention had been consumed by Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian track had stalled. Annapolis was meant to prove it could move again. For one day, with flags lined up and leaders posed together, it looked as though it might. The talks did begin, as promised, and they continued through 2008 in a series of closed-door sessions. But the deadline arrived without a treaty. Olmert left office in 2009, Bush's presidency ended in January of that year, and the conflict's hardest questions remained exactly where they had been. Annapolis is now remembered less for what it produced than for what it promised. The summit's most concrete achievement was a calendar, and the calendar ran out. It stands as a reminder that in diplomacy, setting a date is the easy part.  

■  The Pop Edition November 27: Macy's Parade Begins, Rocky IV Opens Macy's first Thanksgiving parade marched out on November 27, 1924, and Rocky IV opened in 1985. Plus Jaleel White turns 50, with Bill Nye, Kathryn Bigelow and more pop culture history. Macy's first Thanksgiving parade, staged in 1924, borrowed its stars from the Central Park Zoo. The day after Thanksgiving is a fitting time to look at the day that created the modern one. On November 27, 1924, Macy's sent a parade up the streets of Manhattan, and its first marchers had fur and hooves. Sixty-one years later, on the Wednesday before another Thanksgiving, Sylvester Stallone sent Rocky Balboa to Moscow. Plus a Guess Who birthday that lands on a round number, and five more names worth the scroll. THE MOMENT: Macy's First Parade   On Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1924, Macy's staged the first version of what is now its Thanksgiving Day Parade. There were no giant balloons yet. The headliners were live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo, including elephants, camels, bears and donkeys, walking down the street alongside floats and bands. The marchers were largely Macy’s employees, many of them immigrants who wanted to celebrate with something like the festivals they remembered from home. The route ran from Convent Avenue and 145th Street down to the store at Herald Square on 34th Street, where Santa Claus was crowned on a throne at the end. It was billed as a Christmas parade, meant to launch the shopping season, which is why Santa closed it rather than a turkey. The zoo animals stayed for a few years, then gave way to something safer. Balloons took over in 1927, starting with Felix the Cat, and the early ones were released into the sky at the end, with a reward offered to anyone who returned them. The parade has run nearly every year since, and it is now a television institution that began as a department store’s dare. 102 years ago today · Opening act: the Central Park Zoo   Born On This Day Jaleel White BORN 1976 · TURNS 50 Jaleel White is the actor behind Steve Urkel, the suspenders-and-snort neighbor who began as a one-episode guest on ABC’s Family Matters and grew into the show’s center for nine seasons. He later starred in the UPN comedy Sealab-era sitcom run of The Jaleel White Show? No: he led the sitcom Grown Ups, and has done extensive voice work, including the original Sonic the Hedgehog in the 1990s cartoon Sonic the Hedgehog and its later games. Bill Nye BORN 1955 · TURNS 71 A mechanical engineer who worked at Boeing and did stand-up on the side, Nye became “the Science Guy” on a PBS children’s series that ran from 1993 to 1998 and won multiple Emmys. He has since become one of the country’s best-known science communicators, running The Planetary Society and appearing everywhere from talk shows to Dancing with the Stars. Kathryn Bigelow BORN 1951 · TURNS 75 Bigelow built her reputation on tight, physical genre films, among them Near Dark, Point Break and Strange Days. In 2010 she became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, for The Hurt Locker, which also took Best Picture. Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit followed. Michael Vartan BORN 1968 · TURNS 58 Vartan played CIA agent Michael Vaughn opposite Jennifer Garner on ABC’s Alias for five seasons starting in 2001. He also appeared in the romantic comedy Never Been Kissed and later in the series Hawthorne and Kath & Kim-era network television.   OPENING WEEKEND: Rocky IV Rocky IV opened in US theaters on Wednesday, November 27, 1985, the day before Thanksgiving, with Sylvester Stallone writing, directing and starring. The villain was Ivan Drago, a Soviet fighter played by Dolph Lundgren, and the film turned the series into a Cold War fable with a robot butler and a training montage set in the Siberian snow. The plot gives Rocky a reason to fight again after Drago kills Apollo Creed in an exhibition bout. Apollo’s death was a major shock for fans of the earlier films, and the finale in Moscow ends with a speech about everyone changing. Critics were cool, but audiences came. The film earned roughly $127 million in the US, making it the highest-grossing entry in the series at the time. Stallone has said that the sparring scenes with Lundgren were so intense that he was hospitalized for several days afterward. The soundtrack gave James Brown a late-career hit with “Living in America,” and the movie became a template for the glossy, synth-driven action sequels of the era. Drago later returned in Creed II.   Meanwhile… 1924On November 27, 1924, Macy’s held its first Thanksgiving parade in New York, featuring live animals from the Central Park Zoo, including elephants and camels, and ending with Santa Claus at Herald Square. 1940Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco. He died in 1973, and would have been 86 today. His films, including Enter the Dragon, made him the face of martial arts cinema worldwide. 1942Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle, first named Johnny Allen before his father renamed him James Marshall. He died in 1970, and would have been 84 today. 1963Fisher Stevens, who turns 63, was born. He is an actor best known for playing Ben Jabituya in Short Circuit and later won an Oscar as a producer of the documentary The Cove. 1964Robin Givens, who turns 62, was born. She co-starred in the ABC sitcom Head of the Class and later in Boomerang. 1985Rocky IV opened the day before Thanksgiving, giving holiday moviegoers a Cold War showdown between Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago. From zoo animals on Manhattan streets to a Soviet boxer in a Philadelphia-bred franchise, November 27 shows how holiday traditions are built from stunts that worked. Come back tomorrow afternoon for another date, and another reason the past is more fun than it has any right to be.

On Nov. 26, 2011, NASA Launched a Car-Sized Rover Called Curiosity Toward Mars on a Mission Meant to Last Two Years A one-ton robot left Florida on an Atlas V rocket with a simple question: could Mars ever have supported life? The morning after Thanksgiving weekend began, an Atlas V rocket stood on Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. On Nov. 26, 2011, it lifted off carrying NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a spacecraft built around a rover the size of a small car. The rover had been named Curiosity by a sixth-grade student, Clara Ma, in a national student contest. Its destination was 354 million miles away. The Long Cruise   The Atlas V launched at 10:02 a.m. Eastern time and sent the spacecraft on a roughly eight-month cruise to Mars. Curiosity was far larger than the rovers that came before it. It weighed about 900 kilograms, or nearly a ton, and carried ten science instruments, including a laser that could vaporize rock from a distance and a chemistry lab built to analyze soil and powdered stone. NASA put the mission's cost at about $2.5 billion. Its goal was less to find life than to find out whether Mars ever offered the conditions for it. The rover was bound for Gale Crater, where a mountain of layered rock rose from the crater floor like a geological history book. Engineers had picked it partly because the layers promised a record of how the planet changed over time. Getting there, however, required a landing method nobody had tried: the rover would be lowered to the surface on cables from a hovering rocket-powered platform. The launch was the easy part, and everyone involved knew it. The gamble paid off on Aug. 6, 2012, UTC, when Curiosity touched down inside Gale Crater after the so-called seven minutes of terror, the descent that had to be completed without any help from Earth. Within months, it found evidence of an ancient streambed, and later analysis of mudstone showed that the crater once held a lake with chemistry that could have supported microbial life. The prime mission was set at one Martian year, about 687 Earth days. Curiosity passed that mark long ago and was still climbing Mount Sharp more than a decade later, working through terrain no engineer had seen when the rocket left the pad. A rover that left Earth to answer one question has spent years producing new ones, which is how a two-year plan turned into a career.  

■  The Pop Edition November 26: Anarchy in the UK Drops, Casablanca Premieres The Sex Pistols released their debut single 50 years ago today, and Casablanca premiered on Thanksgiving 1942. Plus Rita Ora turns 36, with Tina Turner, Charles Schulz and more November 26 pop culture history. The Sex Pistols, whose debut single Anarchy in the UK was released November 26, 1976. Fifty years ago today, a London band put out a single that EMI would regret within weeks. Thirty-four years before that, in 1942, a Warner Bros. romance opened in New York on Thanksgiving Day and found its moment almost by accident. November 26 also brings a pop star who turns 36, a bassist behind a famous band name, and the birth of the man who drew Charlie Brown. ON THE CHARTS: Anarchy in the UK   On Friday, November 26, 1976, EMI released “Anarchy in the UK,” the first single by the Sex Pistols. It was the label’s own signing, issued with “I Wanna Be Me” on the B-side and produced by Chris Thomas, who had worked with Pink Floyd and Roxy Music. Today is its 50th anniversary. The record arrived just days before the band’s December 1 appearance on Thames Television’s Today program, where a profane exchange with host Bill Grundy made tabloid front pages. That turned a punk single into a national argument. It peaked at No. 38 on the UK singles chart, which undersells its reach. Several tour dates were cancelled, and EMI dropped the band in January 1977. The chart position was modest, but the song became the template for how punk sounded and how outrage could be used as publicity. Its opening riff is still one of the most recognizable in British rock. Released Nov. 26, 1976 · Peak UK position: No. 38 · Dropped by EMI: January 1977   Born On This Day Rita Ora BORN 1990 · TURNS 36 Born in Pristina, Kosovo, and raised in London, Ora broke through in 2012 with the UK No. 1 “Hot Right Now,” a guest spot on a DJ Fresh single, and followed it with her own chart-topper “R.I.P.” She has since moved into television as a host of America’s Next Top Model and a judge on The Masked Singer UK. Tina Turner BORN 1939 · WOULD HAVE BEEN 87 Born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee, Turner rose in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, then rebuilt her career solo. Private Dancer (1984) and “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” her only Hot 100 No. 1, made her a solo star in her mid-40s. She died in 2023. Natasha Bedingfield BORN 1981 · TURNS 45 The British singer-songwriter reached a global audience with “These Words” and “Unwritten” in 2004. The latter became the theme song of MTV’s The Hills. “Pocketful of Sunshine” followed in 2008. Charles M. Schulz BORN 1922 · WOULD HAVE BEEN 104 Born in Minneapolis, Schulz launched Peanuts on October 2, 1950, and drew it himself for nearly 50 years. The strip became a franchise of TV specials and Broadway stagings. He died on February 12, 2000, the day before his final strip ran.   OPENING WEEKEND: Casablanca On November 26, 1942, Casablanca held its world premiere at the Hollywood Theatre in New York, on Thanksgiving Day. The timing was lucky: Allied forces had landed in North Africa, including at Casablanca, on November 8, so the title was suddenly in the headlines. This was a premiere, not the national rollout, which came on January 23, 1943. Warner Bros. had not planned a headline-driven release. The studio treated it as a solid release with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, not as a landmark. Reviews were strong, audiences came, and the film won Best Picture at the 1944 Academy Awards. Its reputation grew steadily through repeat television airings and revival screenings. “As Time Goes By” became a standard, and “Here’s looking at you, kid” entered the language. This year, Thanksgiving falls on November 26 again, exactly as it did at the premiere.   Meanwhile… 1976On November 26, 1976, EMI released the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK” as the band’s debut single, with “I Wanna Be Me” on the B-side. 1942Casablanca premiered at New York’s Hollywood Theatre on Thanksgiving Day, with Bogart and Bergman as the leads. 1933Robert Goulet was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He played Lancelot in the original Broadway Camelot and died in 2007. 1938Impressionist Rich Little was born in Ottawa. He became a TV and Las Vegas fixture for his Johnny Carson and Richard Nixon voices. 1945John McVie, the “Mac” in Fleetwood Mac, was born in London. He has been the band’s bassist since its first lineup. 1973Peter Facinelli, later Dr. Carlisle Cullen in the Twilight films, was born in Queens, New York. He turns 53 today. A punk single that stalled at No. 38 and a wartime romance that opened in a lucky week both outlasted their first reviews. For more pop culture history, visit the homepage and see what happened on every other date.

On Nov. 25, 2020, Diego Maradona died at his home outside Buenos Aires, and a sport that had spent four decades arguing about him went quiet The man who gave football the Hand of God and the Goal of the Century was gone at 60, and two countries responded with mourning that matched his myth. Diego Armando Maradona died on Nov. 25, 2020, at age 60, from a cardiorespiratory arrest at a rented house in Tigre, in Buenos Aires province. He had undergone surgery for a blood clot on his brain only weeks earlier, on Nov. 3, and had been recovering at home. The news reached a world in the middle of a pandemic, and it still pulled fans into the streets of Buenos Aires and Naples. The Last Goodbye   Argentina's government declared three days of national mourning. Mourners queued for hours in Buenos Aires to pass his coffin, which lay in state at the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada. Argentina's football association and clubs paid tribute, and in Naples, fans gathered at the murals and shrines that had stood in the city for decades. Maradona had led Napoli to its first Serie A title in 1987 and a second in 1990, victories that gave the southern Italian city a pride it had rarely been handed by the football establishment of the north. His reach was never really about a single club, though. At the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, he captained Argentina to the title, and in the quarterfinal against England he scored two goals within minutes of each other, one of them a dribble through the English defense that came to be called the Goal of the Century. The other was the handball he later called the work of the Hand of God. Few players have been remembered so vividly for both a miracle and a misdeed in the same ninety minutes. The tributes did not erase the complications of his life, which had included addiction, health scares and public feuds, and which commentators noted were all part of why people felt they knew him. Within days, Napoli's stadium, the San Paolo, was formally renamed Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, with the club announcing the change in early December. The city that had once adopted him as an outsider now put his name on the ground where he had played. Scoreboards and jerseys around the world carried his number 10 in the days after his death. It was an unusual honor for a player who had spent his career being told he was either a genius or a cheat, and who had mostly insisted on being both. The sport he left behind has spent the years since looking for someone who could make a ball do what he did, and the stadium bearing his name keeps filling up to watch it try.  

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