Buddy Holly was a singer, songwriter, and guitarist who formed The Crickets and pioneered rock music with the hit "That’ll Be the Day," which topped the Billboard U.S. Best Sellers list.
He won a talent contest when he was five years old for singing "Have You Ever Gone Sailing (Down the River of Memories)."
He died in a plane crash less than two years after his career took off.
Rolling Stone ranked him as the thirteenth "Greatest Artist of All Time."
Buddy Holly & The Crickets on the Ed Sullivan Show, January, 1958.
LTJG Kennedy (standing at far right) with his crew on PT-109 in 1943.
On this day in 1943, future President John F. Kennedy was serving as the commander of a torpedo boat in the Solomon Islands when his ship was fired upon by the Japanese navy.
As a young man, Kennedy had desperately wanted to go into the Navy but was originally rejected because of chronic health problems, particularly a back injury he had sustained playing football while attending Harvard University. In 1941, though, his politically connected father used his influence to get Jack, as he was called, into the Navy. In 1942, Kennedy volunteered for PT (motorized torpedo) boat duty in the Pacific.
On this day in 1965, the United States landed about 3,500 Marines in South Vietnam to defend the U.S. air base at Da Nag. They were the first American combat troops to land in Vietnam. They joined 23,000 American military advisors already in Vietnam.
As American troops fight their first large scale battles against the North Vietnamese Army, college students march against the war in Boston, October 16, 1965.
Joseph Paul DiMaggio (November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999)
Joe DiMaggio was a baseballcenter fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. He is widely considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, and is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15 – July 16, 1941), a record that still stands. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955 and was voted the sport’s greatest living player in a poll taken during the baseball centennial year of 1969.
DiMaggio, a heavy smoker for much of his adult life, was admitted to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, on October 12, 1998, for lung cancer surgery and remained there for 99 days. He returned to his home in Hollywood, Florida, on January 19, 1999; he died there at age 84 on March 8.
On August 11, 1952, the U.S. Post Office issued the Mount Rushmore Memorial commemorative stamp on the 25th anniversary of the dedication of the National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. On January 2, 1974, a 26-cent stamp depicting the monument was also issued.
Mariner 10 was a roboticspace probe launched by NASA on November 3, 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus. The spacecraft flew past Mercury three times with the first encounter taking place on March 29, 1974 (below). Mariner 10 was deactivated March 24, 1975.
