(FOX NEWS) – "A Charlie Brown Christmas," a beloved holiday
television tradition for generations of American families, debuted
to overwhelming popular acclaim despite network fears of failure
on this day in history, Dec. 9, 1965.

Expectations were low for its success, according to several
accounts of the history of the broadcast.

CBS executives were underwhelmed by the slow pace of the
production; and the network had battled behind the scenes
with "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz over the inclusion
of a scene lifted straight from the New Testament of the Bible.

Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz 
(November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000)

On December 3, 1947, Marlon Brando’s famous cry of “STELLA!”
first booms across a Broadway stage, electrifying the audience
at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre during the first-ever performance
of Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire.

A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most critically acclaimed
plays of the twentieth century and Williams’s most popular work. 

The 23-year-old Brando played the rough, working-class Polish-
American Stanley Kowalski, and his violent clash with Blanche
DuBois (played on Broadway by Jessica Tandy),

Jessica Tandy with Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named
Desire.

Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Marlon Brando.

     
From Act Three, Scene Five.

George Dewey Hay (November 9, 1895 – May 8, 1968) was 
an American radio personality, announcer and newspaper 
reporter. He was the founder of the original Grand Ole
Opry radio program.

The Grand Ole Opry, one of the longest-lived and most popular showcases for western music, began broadcasting live from
Nashville, Tennessee on November 28, 1925. The showcase
was originally named the Barn Dance, after a Chicago radio
program called the National Barn Dance that had begun
broadcasting the previous year.

Impressed by the popularity of the Chicago-based National
Barn Dance, producers at WSM radio in Nashville decided
to create their own version of the show to cater to southern
audiences who could not receive the Chicago signal. Both
the Grand Ole Opry and the National Barn Dance aired on
Saturday nights and featured folk music, fiddling, and the
relatively new genre of country-western music.

The home of country music and original broadcasting site
of the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman is one of the most
historic and widely visited tours in Tennessee.

Minnie Pearl (Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon)
(October 25, 1912 – March 4, 1996)

(FOX NEWS) – Former Denver Broncos defensive lineman
Harald Hasselbach has died after a six-month bout with
cancer.  

The two-time Super Bowl champion’s family announced
his death Thursday, saying he was "free of pain."

According to the family, Hasselbach had been diagnosed
with metastatic mucinous adenocarcinoma.

On November 23, 1936, the first issue of the pictorial magazine
Life was published, featuring a cover photo of the Fort Peck
Dam’s spillway by Margaret Bourke-White.

Life actually had its start earlier in the 20th century as a different
kind of magazine: a weekly humor publication, not unlike today’s
The New Yorker in its use of tart cartoons, humorous pieces and
cultural reporting.

When the original Life folded during the Great Depression, the
influential American publisher Henry Luce bought the name 
and re-launched the magazine as a picture-based periodical.

A look inside that first issue of LIFE.