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 on this
day in 1936.

Henry Robinson Luce (1898 – 1967)

This 2012 photo shows the Fort Peck Dam spillway in
northeast Montana.

Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy.

Complicated and tension-filled negotiations between the United
States and the Soviet Union finally resulted in a plan to end the
two-week-old Cuban Missile Crisis. A frightening period in which
nuclear holocaust seemed imminent began to come to an end.

                             
CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Robert Redford at 10.

1962
    
   

Charles Robert Redford Jr. is a retired actor and filmmaker. He
has received numerous accolades such as an Academy Award,
a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the
Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, the Screen Actors Guild Life
Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in
2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary César in 2019. He
was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people
in the world in 2014 (below). He is 88 today.

 
CAMILLE BOHANNON

Singer Madonna (Louise Ciccone) the”Queen of Pop” is
66  years young today.    

^[

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.