1949

 
Ed McMahon (L) with The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson

  Edward Peter "Ed" McMahon, Jr. (March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009)

McMahon was a comedian, game show host and announcer. He is best
remembered as the announcer and sidekick on the The Tonight Show
with Johnny Carson on NBC from 1962 to 1992. He also was the host of
the original version of Star Search on CBS from 1983 to 1995. McMahon
also co-hosted TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes with Dick Clark from 1982
to 1998 on NBC and ABC. 

The Dial-a-President radio program, featuring President Jimmy Carter (above)
and CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite, aired for the first time. It was the
idea of both Cronkite and CBS, a test-run to see if a show of its nature could
be successful. Approximately 9 million calls flooded the CBS switchboard in
New York during the two-hour broadcast. Nerveless, the program never
aired again.

Walter Cronkite

In 1937,Franklin Delano Roosevelt (center) was the first American President
to be inaugurated on the 20 of January.

The crew of Apollo 8: Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell.

Apollo 8 was the second crewed mission in the Apollo space program.  After the 
launch on December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 took three days to reach the Moon. It
orbited ten times over the course of 20 hours, during which time the crew made a Christmas Eve TV broadcast, reading the first 10 verses from the Bibles Book of Genesis. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. The successful mission of Apollo 8 paved the way for Apollo 11 and the fulfillment of President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end
of the 1960s.