The Tonight Show is a  late-night talk show that has aired on NBC-TV since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today. The first host of  the show was Steve Allen(above). Allen departed Tonight after NBC ordered him to concentrate all his efforts on his Sunday night variety program,The Steve Allen Show, hoping to combat CBS-TV and The Ed Sullivan Show’s dominance of the Sunday night ratings. Below is a clip from the first Tonight Show that aired on Monday night, September 27, 1954.

The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) began when gold was discovered by James W. Marshall (above) at Sutter’s Mill, in northern California at Coloma. News of the discovery 
brought some 300,000 people to California from vast parts of the United States and abroad.Some became quite wealthy, but many returned home with little more than what
they started with. The effects of the Gold Rush resulted in San Francisco growing from a small settlement to a boomtown. A state constitution was written and California became  
a state in 1850 as part of the compromise of 1850. 

USS Pueblo (AGER-2) is an American Navy intelligence ship which was boarded and captured by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in what is known as the Pueblo incident or alternatively as the Pueblo crisis or the Pueblo affair. Occurring less than a week after President Lyndon B. Johnson’s State of the Union Address and only weeks before the Tet Offensive, it was a major incident in the Cold War.

North Korea stated that it strayed into their territorial waters, but the United States maintains that the vessel was in international waters at the time of the incident.

The Pueblo, still held by the DPRK today, officially remains a commissioned vessel of the United States Navy. It is currently moored along the Taedong River in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, where it is used as a propaganda museum ship. It is the only ship of the U.S. Navy currently being held captive.

                    
                 CDR. Llyod M. Bucher, Commanding Officer  of the USS Pueblo

                      
                          The captured USS Pueblo on display in North Korea

           Memorial plaque at the Confederate Prison Museum, Andersonville, Ga.

Buzz Aldrin , retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history. On July 20, 1969, he was the second human being to set foot on the Moon, following mission commander Neil Armstrong.

                                       Aldrin on the Moon

Benjamin Franklin  was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, and a carriage odometer. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.  

A political cartoon by Franklin urged the colonies to join together during
the French and Indian War.