ED DONAHUE

After more than a decade of hits like that never quite made it
to the top of the charts, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
finally earn their first #1 hit when “Tears Of A Clown” topped
the Billboard Hot 100 on December 12, 1970.

William "Smokey" Robinson Jr. (84).

The Hoover Company is a home appliance company founded in
Ohio in 1915. It also established a major base in the United
Kingdom, where it dominated the electric vacuum cleaner
industry during most of the 20th century. The company has
headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.

William Henry Hoover, founder of Hoover.

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On this day in 1964, in response to a reported shooting,
officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were
dispatched to the Hacienda Motel, where they found
singer Sam Cooke lying dead on the office floor, shot
three times in the chest by the motel’s manager, Bertha
Franklin.

The authorities ruled Cooke’s death a case of justifiable
homicide, based on the testimony of Ms. Franklin, who
claimed that Cooke had threatened her life after attempting
to rape a young woman with whom he had earlier checked
in.

Even as the lurid details of the case were becoming common
knowledge, some 200,000 fans turned out in the streets of
Los Angeles and Chicago to mourn the passing of Sam
Cooke.

In the years since his death, the circumstances surrounding
Cooke’s shooting have been called into question by his family
and others. Though the truth of what happened on this day in
1964 remains uncertain, Sam Cooke’s place in the history of
popular music is anything but.

NEW YORK (AP) — George Joseph Kresge Jr., who was known
to generations of TV watchers as the mesmerizing entertainer
and mentalist The Amazing Kreskin, reportedly died from
complications of dementia at an assisted living facility in Wayne,
New Jersey.         

Kreskin (right) and Johnny Carson.