Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr.
(February 17, 1925 – January 23, 2021)
(Fox News) – Hal Holbrook, the Emmy and Tony award-
winning actor best known for his portrayal of Mark
Twain in his famous one-man-show, died on Jan. 23 at
his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. No cause of death has
been given.
Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain in his one-man show in 2005.
MIKE GRACIA
On this day, Pvt. Eddie Slovik became the first American
soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion
and the only one who suffered such a fate during World
War II.
Larry King (Lawrence Harvey Zeiger)
(November 19, 1933 – January 23, 2021)
On January 2, 2021, it was revealed that King had been hospitalized
10 days earlier in a Los Angeles hospital after testing positive for
COVID-19. He died at the age of 87 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,
Los Angeles.
Local owners signed on KLOR-TV, Channel 12, from Portland, Ore.,
in 1955 as an ABC affiliate with a secondary DuMont affiliation. On
the following year, KGW-TV, Channel 8, signed on the air and took
the ABC affiliation from KLOR-TV. The DuMont Television Network
went out of business, leaving KLOR without a network affiliation.
George Haggerty purchased KLOR-TV in 1957, along with rival
KPTV. KPTV launched in 1952 as the state’s first TV station. It
was an NBC affiliate and the nation’s first commercial UHF TV
station, broadcasting on Channel 27. (FADED SIGNALS)
On October 5, 1947, President Harry Truman (1884-1972) made
the first-ever televised presidential address from the White House,
asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain in order to help starving Europeans.
At the time of Truman’s food-conservation speech, Europe was
still recovering from World War II and suffering from famine. He
worried that if the U.S. didn’t provide food aid, his administration’s Marshall Plan for European economic recovery would fall apart.
Truman asked farmers and distillers to reduce grain use and
requested that the public voluntarily forgo meat on Tuesdays,
eggs and poultry on Thursdays and save a slice of bread each
day. The food program was short-lived, as ultimately the Marshall
Plan succeeded in helping to spur economic revitalization and
growth in Europe.
