Jailhouse Rock premiered on October 17, 1957 in Memphis, Tennessee
and was released nationwide on November 8, 1957. It peaked at number
3 on the Variety box office chart, and reached number 14 in the year’s
box office totals, grossing $4 million.

CARLATA BRADLEY

    
    
    
    
    
   
Over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California, pilot Chuck Yeager flew
the Bell X-1 rocket plane and became the first person to break the
sound barrier on this day in 1947.     

Charles Elwood Yeager turned 96 in February.

      
CAMILLE
BOHANNON

On this day in 1977, Voyager 2 was launched by NASA from a
spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida with a Titan IIIE / Centaur
rocket . The spacecraft was carrying a copper phonograph
record containing greetings in dozens of languages and
samples of music (below).

Singer Robert Anthony Plant is 71 today.

Led Zepplin reunited for a show at London’s O2 arena, 2007.

SANDY KOZEL

On this day in 1945, the American B-29 bomber, known as the Enola
Gay,(above) dropped the first atomic bomb on an inhabited area. The bomb named "Little  Boy" was dropped over the center of Hiroshima,
Japan. An estimated 140,000 people were killed that morning.

Richard (Dick) Wagstaff Clark (November 30, 1929 – April 18, 2012)

Television, rock and roll and teenagers. In the late 1950s, when television and
rock and roll were new and when the biggest generation in American history
was just about to enter its teens, it took a bit of originality to see the potential power in this now-obvious combination. The man who saw that potential more clearly than any other was a 26-year-old native of upstate New York named
Dick Clark, who transformed himself and a local Philadelphia television
program into two of the most culturally significant forces of the early rock-
and-roll era. His iconic show, American Bandstand, began broadcasting
nationally on this day in 1957, beaming images of clean-cut, average
teenagers dancing to the not-so-clean-cut Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta
Shakin’ Goin’ On” to 67 ABC affiliates across the nation.

The show that evolved into American Bandstand began on Philadephia’s
WFIL-TV in 1952, a few years before the popular ascension of rock and
roll. Hosted by local radio personality Bob Horn (below).

Donald Loyd "Bob" Horn
(February 20, 1916 – July 31, 1966)