Saturday Night Live (SNL), a topical comedy sketch show featuring Chevy
Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Jane
Curtin and Laraine Newman, makes its debut on NBC; it will go on to
become the longest-running, highest-rated show on late-night television.

The 90-minute program, which from its inception has been broadcast live
from Studio 8H in the GE Building at Rockefeller Center, includes a
different guest host and musical act each week. The opening sketch of
each show ends with one actor saying, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday
Night!”

For the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile
factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis–
the automobile’s frame–is assembled using the revolutionary industrial
technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts
on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one
“Model T” from 12-1/2 hours to six. Within a year, further assembly line improvements reduced the time required to 93 man-minutes.

The staggering increase in productivity effected by Ford’s use of the
moving assembly line allowed him to drastically reduce the cost of
the Model T, thereby accomplishing his dream of making the car
affordable to ordinary consumers.

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947)

ROSS SIMPSON

On this day in 1927,  "The Jazz Singer" opened in New York starring Al
Jolson. The film was based on the short story "The Day of Atonement"
by Sampson Raphaelson. It is the first feature-length motion picture
with not only a synchronized recorded music score but also lip-
synchronous singing and speech in several isolated sequences

The Soviet Union inaugurates the “Space Age” with its launch of Sputnik,
the world’s first artificial satellite. The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the
Russian word for “satellite,” was launched at 10:29 p.m. Moscow time from
the Tyuratam launch base in the Kazakh Republic. Sputnik had a diameter
of 22 inches and weighed 184 pounds and circled Earth once every hour
and 36 minutes. Traveling at 18,000 miles an hour, its elliptical orbit had an
apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 584 miles and a perigee (nearest point)
of 143 miles. Visible with binoculars before sunrise or after sunset, Sputnik transmitted radio signals back to Earth strong enough to be picked up by
amateur radio operators. Those in the United States with access to such
equipment tuned in and listened in awe as the beeping Soviet spacecraft
passed over America several times a day. In January 1958, Sputnik’s orbit deteriorated, as expected, and the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Musician and actor Sting (Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner) is 68 years
old today. He was the principal songwriter, lead singer, and bassist for
the new wave  rock band the Police from 1977 to 1984, and launched a
solo career in 1985. He has included elements of rock, jazz, reggae,
classical, new-age and worldbeat in his music.