A century ago, even before the phonograph had become a
a common household item, there was already a burgeoning
music industry in the United States based not on the sale of
recorded musical performances, but on the sale of sheet
music. It was in the medium of printed paper, and not grooved
lacquer or vinyl discs, that songs gained popularity in the first
two decades of the 20th century, and no song gained greater
popularity in that era than Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime
Band.” Copyrighted on March 18, 1911, The song was the
was the multimillion-selling smash hit that helped turn
American popular music into an international phenomenon,
both culturally and economically.

Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin) 
(May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989)

The Songbird. a twin-engine Cessna T-50 .

The television version (NBC/ABC) starred Kirby Grant as Schuyler 
“Sky” King, an Arizona rancher and airplane pilot, with Gloria
Winters as his niece Penny and Sky’s nephew Clipper, played by
Ron Hagerty. 

The series had strong Western elements, King usually captured
criminals and spies and found lost hikers, though he did so with
the use of his airplane, the Songbird.
 

From left: Kirgy Grant,Gloria Winters and Ron Hagerty.

Original Release: September 16, 1951 – March 8, 1959.

During production of the series.

MIKE GRACIA

The west Pacific volcanic island of Iwo Jima was declared secured
by the U.S. military after weeks of fiercely fighting its Japanese defenders.

The Americans began applying pressure to the Japanese defense
of Iwo Jima in February 1944, when B-24 and B-25 bombers raided
the island for 74 days straight. It was the longest pre-invasion bombardment of the war,

Iwo Jima island today.

On this day in 1751, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution,
recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the Federalist 
Papers and fourth president of the United States, was born on a
plantation in Virginia.

Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College
of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he successfully completed a four-year course of study in two years and, in 1769,
helped found the American Whig Society, the second literary and
debate society at Princeton (and the world), to rival the previously established Cliosophic Society.