After more than a decade of hits like that never quite made it
to the top of the charts, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
finally earn their first #1 hit when “Tears Of A Clown” topped
the Billboard Hot 100 on December 12, 1970.

William "Smokey" Robinson Jr. (84).

On this day in 1964, in response to a reported shooting,
officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were
dispatched to the Hacienda Motel, where they found
singer Sam Cooke lying dead on the office floor, shot
three times in the chest by the motel’s manager, Bertha
Franklin.

The authorities ruled Cooke’s death a case of justifiable
homicide, based on the testimony of Ms. Franklin, who
claimed that Cooke had threatened her life after attempting
to rape a young woman with whom he had earlier checked
in.

Even as the lurid details of the case were becoming common
knowledge, some 200,000 fans turned out in the streets of
Los Angeles and Chicago to mourn the passing of Sam
Cooke.

In the years since his death, the circumstances surrounding
Cooke’s shooting have been called into question by his family
and others. Though the truth of what happened on this day in
1964 remains uncertain, Sam Cooke’s place in the history of
popular music is anything but.

Magnum, P.I. is a crime drama television series with Selleck as
a private investigator (P.I.) living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series
ran from December 11, 1980, to May 1, 1988, during its first-run
broadcast on CBS. Magnum, P.I. consistently ranked in the top
20 television programs in the Nielsen ratings during the first
five years of its original run, finishing as high as number three
for the 1982–83 season.

Magnum and his Ferrari 308 GTS.

Thomas William Selleck will be 80 on January 29th.

NEW YORK (AP) — Her memories of recording “Rockin’
Around the Christmas Tree” are a little hazy.

She remembers the producer placing decorations around
the studio and blasting the air conditioner on a warm
Nashville day to create a holiday spirit. The musicians,
she recalls, nailed it in a couple of takes.

That’s about it. After all, Brenda Lee was 13 years old at
the time — and it was 66 years ago, in 1958.

Brenda Lee ( Mae Tarpley) is 81 years young today.

On December 10, 1690, a failed attack on Quebec and subsequent
near-mutiny force the Massachusetts Bay Colony to issue the
first paper currency in the history of the Western Hemisphere.