1 1886 Rex Stout; 1913 Mary Martin; 1929 Dick Shawn; 1935 Woody Allen, Lou Rawls; 1940 Richard Pryor; 1945 Bette Midler; 1946 Gilbert O'Sullivan; 1951 Treat Williams.
• 1804: Napoleon marries Josephine.
• 1878: White House gets a telephone installed; first call is to verify that the president's refrigerator is running.
• 1885: US Patent Office recognizes this day in 1885 as first time Dr. Pepper served. Later admits it was just bored and out of Coca-Cola.

2 1859 Georges Seurat; 1954 Stone Phillips; 1955 Dennis Christopher; 1981 Britney Spears.
• 1887: Charles Dickens' first public reading in US.
• 1823: President James Monroe declares his "Monroe Doctrine;" female visitors to White House are warned to watch out if the president wants to "play doctrine."
• 1954: U.S. Senate censures Joe McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute," which, coming from other senators, is really saying something.

3 1755 Gilbert Stuart; 1857 Joseph Conrad; 1895 Anna Freud; 1923 Maria Callas; 1930 Andy Williams; 1948 Ozzy Osbourne; 1960 Daryl Hannah; 1961 Julianne Moore.
• 1946: US government asks UN to order dictator Franco out of Spain; the UN doesn't say, 'pretty please', and Franco remains in power for another 30 years.
• 1947: Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire premieres on Broadway; much to the subsequent chagrin of women named "Stella."
• 1953: Eisenhower criticizes Joseph McCarthy for claiming there are communists are in the Republican party; Ike points out that commies don't golf.
• 1969: John Lennon is offered the lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Jesus Christ Superstar; turns it down to avoid typecasting.
• 1931: What a relief! Alka Seltzer goes on sale.
• 1984: Oldest groom, Harry Stevens (103), weds Thelma Lucas (83); guests bet it won't last.

4 1934 Wink Martindale; 1937 Max Baer Jr.; 1949 Jeff Bridges; 1964 Marisa Tomei.
• 1783: General Washington bids his officers farewell at Fraunces Tavern in New York; they are so moved by his words they don't notice that he's gone before the check arrives.
• 1976: Liz Taylor's 7th marriage (John Warner).
• 1979: Liza Minnelli's 3rd marriage (Mark Gero).
• 1988: Gary Busey suffers a head injury in motorcycle crash; this explains a lot, but not everything.

5 1839 George Armstrong Custer; 1890 Fritz Lang; 1901 Walt Disney; 1902 Strom Thurmond; 1934 Joan Didion; 1935 Calvin Trillin; 1938 J.J. Cale.
• 1868: First American bicycle college opens in New York; we have no idea what the hell a bicycle college is. Neither does Google. Or Wikipedia. If you know, contact us.
• 1929: First US nudist organization; cold weather forces them to wear coats to first several meetings.
• 1945: Flight 19, aka the "Lost Squadron," disappears into the Bermuda Triangle.
• 1968: Rolling Stones release Beggar's Banquet.
• 1974: Monty Python's Flying Circus final episode airs on BBC; geeks wept.

6 1896 Ira Gershwin; 1906 Agnes Moorehead; 1920 Dave Brubeck; 1924 Wally Cox; 1932 Don King; 1938 David Ossman; 1941 Richard Speck; 1955 Steven Wright.
• 1877: The Washington Post publishes first edition.
• 1923: First presidential radio broadcast; Coolidge gets momentary stage fright and earns his nickname "Silent Cal."
• 1933: A Federal judge rules James Joyce novel Ulysses is not obscene, just really, really long.
• 1955: Psychologist Joyce Brothers wins $64,000 Question.

7 1894 Stuart Davis; 1915 Eli Wallach; 1917 Helen Gurley Brown; 1942 Harry Chapin; 1949 Tom Waits; 1956 Larry Bird.
• 1941: Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
• 1990: Ted Turner & Jane Fonda announce their engagement; yeah, nobody saw that one coming, either.

8 1765 Eli Whitney; 1879 Paul Klee; 1894 James Thurber; 1911 Lee J. Cobb; 1925 Sammy Davis Jr.; 1933 Flip Wilson; 1936 David Carradine; 1943 Jim Morrison; 1944 Neil Innes; 1947 Gregg Allman; 1953 Kim Basinger; 1964 Teri Hatcher; 1966 Sinead O'Connor.
• 1963: Frank Sinatra Jr. is kidnapped; after listening to him hum out of tune for a couple of days, the crooks offer to trade him for one of Bing Crosby's kids.  
• 1965: A Charlie Brown Christmas premieres.
• 1992: Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott apologizes for racist remarks; vows to stick with insulting fat people.

9 1909 Douglas Fairbanks Jr; 1911 Broderick Crawford; 1912 Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill; 1918 Kirk Douglas; 1929 John Cassavetes; 1930 Buck Henry; 1941 Beau Bridges; 1943 Rick Danko; 1950 Joan Armatrading; 1952 Michael Dorn; 1953 John Malkovich; 1957 Donny Osmond.
• 1793: Noah Webster founds New York's first daily newspaper, American Minerva.
• 1967: Jim Morrison, arrested on stage for disturbing the peace.

10 1911 Chet Huntley; 1929 Dan Blocker.
• 1915: 10-millionth Model T Ford assembled.
• 1919: National League votes to ban the spitball's use by all new pitchers; chewing tobacco sales plummet.
• 1927: Grand Ole Opry's first radio broadcast.

11 1918 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; 1931 Rita Moreno; 1946 Teri Garr.
• 1844: First dental use of nitrous oxide.
• 1961: Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii album goes to #1 & stays #1 for 20 weeks.
• 1961: JFK provides US military helicopters & crews to South Vietnam; they're still there when Blue Hawaii drops off the charts.
• 1967: Showing the sort of business savvy that would mark its entire history, the Beatles' Apple Music signs the band Grapefruit, whose only claim to fame will be as the first group Apple Music ever signed up.

12 1863 Edvard Munch; 1913 Jesse Owens; 1915 Frank Sinatra; 1924 Edward Koch; 1952 Cathy Rigby.
• 1913: Two years after being stolen, the Mona Lisa is recovered in Florence, Italy; she adamantly denies she was brainwashed, renamed Tania and forced to rob banks.
• 1925: Arthur Heinman coins term "motel," opens Motel Inn, San Luis Obispo, California; doesn't copyright "no vacancy" and loses out on a fortune.

13 1818 Mary Todd Lincoln; 1910 Van Heflin; 1925 Dick Van Dyke; 1957 Steve Buscemi; 1967 Jamie Foxx.
• 1843: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens published.
• 1903: Wright Brothers make first flight at Kittyhawk, North Carolina.
• 1922: Charles Ebbets proposes putting numbers on players' sleeves or caps; players hurl tobacco juice at him.
• 1928: Clip-on tie designed; inventor wears prototype to work only to have it yanked off his shirt then spend rest of the day watching his co-workers play keep-away with it.  
• 1950: James Dean begins his career in a Pepsi commercial; nearly loses gig when he goes all method, refusing to say 'Pepsi please' claiming, "my character would never do that."
• 1967: Arlo Guthrie releases Alice's Restaurant.

14 1896 James Doolittle; 1908 Morey Amsterdam; 1911 Spike Jones; 1946 Patty Duke, Michael Ovitz.
• 1977 Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta, premieres.

15 1892 J. Paul Getty; 1922 Alan Freed; 1933 Tim Conway; 1942 Dave Clark; 1949 Don Johnson.
• 1854: First street-cleaning machine in US used in Philadelphia.
• 1939: Frankly, we don't give a damn that on this day Gone With the Wind premiered.
• 1952: Christine Jorgenson is first person to undergo a sex-change operation.
• 1962: Vaughn Meader's The First Family comedy album goes #1 & stays there for 12 weeks.

16 1770 Ludwig van Beethoven; 1775 Jane Austen; 1899 Sir Noel Coward; 1939 Liv Ullman; 1952 Elayne Boosler.
• 1809: Napoleon divorces Josephine
• 1950: Truman proclaims state of emergency against "Communist imperialism"
• 1971: Don McLean's eight minutes plus-long American Pie is released, replacing Innagoddadavida and Alice's Restaurant as favorite disc jockey bathroom-break music.
• 1978: Ronald Reagan denounces President Jimmy Carter's recognition of the People's Republic of China.

17 1929 William Safire; 1945 Ernie Hudson; 1946 Eugene Levy.
• 1790: Aztec calendar stone discovered in Mexico City.
• 1791: New York City traffic regulation creates first one-way street; then as now, everybody pretty much ignores it.
• 1918: Believe it or Not, Robert Ripley began his Believe It or Not! column on this date!
• 1919: American Meteorological Society founded; garden party ceremony spoiled by "surprise" rainstorm.
• 1955: Carl Perkins records Blue Suede Shoes; rumors swirl that his shoes were neither suede nor blue.
• 1969: Tiny Tim marry Miss Vicky on The Tonight Show.
• 1969: USAF closes Project Blue Book, concluding no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings. No evidence at all. Nope. Nothing. Cased closed. Nothing to see here. Move along.
• 1973: The American Psychiatric Association takes homosexuality off list of mental illnesses and re-categorizes it under “Things you do just to hurt your mother and me.”

18 1886 Ty Cobb; 1888 Robert Moses; 1916 Betty Grable; 1917 Ossie Davis; 1919 Anita O'Day; 1927 Ramsey Clark; 1932 Roger Smith; 1943 Keith Richards; 1947 Steven Spielberg; 1955 Ray Liotta; 1966 Kiefer Sutherland.
• 1892: Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite premieres.

19 1910 Jean Genet; 1915 Edith Piaf; 1940 Phil Ochs; 1946 Marianne Faithfull, Robert Urich.
• 1732: Benjamin Franklin begins publication of Poor Richard's Almanack.
• 1776: Thomas Paine published his American Crisis essay, in which he wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls."
• 1871: Albert Jones patents corrugated paper.
• 1957: The Music Man, starring Robert Preston, opens on Broadway.
• 1971: A Clockwork Orange premieres.

20 1926 David Levine; 1946 Uri Geller, Patti Smith, John Spencer; 1948 Alan Parsons.
• 1879: Tom Edison privately demonstrated incandescent light at Menlo Park.
• 1880: New York's Broadway lit by electricity, becomes known as "Great White Way."
• 1920: Bob Hope becomes an American citizen.
• 1967: Ian Anderson & Glenn Cornick form Jethro Tull.
• 1967: Feel good holiday classic The Graduate premieres.
• 1969: Peter, Paul & Mary's cover of Leaving on a Jet Plane reaches #1.

21 1879 Joseph Stalin; 1918 Kurt Waldheim; 1922 Paul Winchell; 1935 Phil Donahue; 1937 Jane Fonda; 1940 Frank Zappa; 1948 Samuel L. Jackson; 1955 Jane Kaczmarek; 1957 Ray Romano; 1965 Andy Dick.  
• 1919: J. Edgar Hoover deports anarchist Emma Goldman to Russia; but confiscates her wardrobe as "evidence."
• 1946: Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life premieres.  
• 1968: David Crosby, Stephen Stills & Graham Nash premiere together in California.
• 1969: Vince Lombardi coaches his last football game; when he loses, his remark, "Eh, whaddaya gonna do?" takes many by surprise.
• 1978: John Wayne Gacy, Jr. is arrested.

22 1744 Abigail Adams; 1808 Thomas Cook; 1819 George Eliot; 1862 Connie Mack; 1899 Hoagy Carmichael, Wiley Post.
• 1882: First string of Christmas tree lights is created by Thomas Edison; they get tangled up in the box, however, and are not put up until Christmas 1887.
• 1968: Julie Nixon marries David Eisenhower.

23 1908 Yousuf Karsh; 1923 James Stockdale; 1943 Harry Shearer; 1949 Susan Lucci; 1965 Slash, Eddie Vedder.
• 1888: Vincent van Gogh cuts off his left ear.
• 1963: Beach Boys first appearance on Shindig.

24 Christmas Eve; some people cheat and open presents.
• 1809 Kit Carson; 1905 Howard Hughes; 1922 Ava Gardner; 1957 Hamid Karzai; 1971 Ricky Martin.

25 Christmas Day
1887 Conrad Hilton; 1892 Rebecca West; 1893 Ropert Ripley; 1899 Humphrey Bogart; 1911 Burne Hogarth; 1924 Rod Serling; 1931 Carlos Castaneda; 1946 Jimmy Buffett; 1948 Barbara Mandrell; 1949 Sissy Spacek.
• 1776: Washington crosses the Delaware; yes, to get to the other side.
• 1939: Montgomery Ward introduces Rudolph the Reindeer.
• 1964: Not a single Beatles- or James Bond-themed Christmas present received by me that year; I'm not bitter or anything, but do you have any idea what that stuff is worth nowadays?

26 Boxing Day
1914 Richard Widmark; 1917 Rosemary Woods; 1921 Steve Allen; 1927 Alan King; 1939 Phil Spector.
• 1919: Yankees & Red Sox reach agreement on transfer of Babe Ruth.
• 1973: The Exorcist, starring Linda Blair & rated X, premieres; pea soup sales nosedive.
• 1982: TIME's Man of the Year is a computer; congratulations, Hal! Now open the pod bay doors.

27 1879 Sydney Greenstreet; 1901 Marlene Dietrich; 1943 Cokie Roberts.
• 1932: Radio City Music Hall opens.
• 1937: Mae West performs an Adam & Eve skit that gets her banned from NBC radio; her line "Is that a snake with an apple in it's mouth under your fig leaf or are you just happy to see me?" is, apparently, way too much.
• 1947: Puppet Playhouse, featuring Howdy Doody, is first broadcast; childrens' reaction split evenly between "giddy delight" and "abject terror."

28 1856 Woodrow Wilson; 1922 Stan Lee; 1946 Edgar Winter; 1952 S. Epatha Merkerson.
• 1869: William Finley Semple patents chewing gum.
• 1895: Lumiere Brothers open first movie theater in Paris.
• 1958: Chipmunks (Alvin, Simon & Theodore with David Seville) novelty record Alvin's Harmonica hits #1; upcoming Chipmunks movie sequel unlikely to do nearly as well.

29 1721 Madame De Pompadour; 1776 Charles Macintosh; 1808 Andrew Johnson; 1936 Mary Tyler Moore; 1938 Jon Voight; 1947 Ted Danson; 1959 Paula Poundstone.
• 1851: First YMCA opens (Boston); inaugural members include a cowboy, a policeman, a construction worker and an indian.
• 1852: Emma Snodgrass arrested in Boston for wearing pants; it is believed she intended to sneak into the YMCA.
• 1862: Bowling ball invented; that's right, somebody invented it.
• 1934: First college basketball game: Notre Dame v. NYU at Madison Square Garden; both teams are made up of pasty white guys of average height who actually have to attend class the next day.
• 1957: Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme wed (in Las Vegas, naturally)
• 1967: Star Trek's The Trouble With Tribbles first airs.

30 1928 Bo Diddley; 1928 Jack Lord; 1935 Sandy Koufax; 1942 Michael Nesmith; 1947 Jeff Lynne; 1957 Matt Lauer; 1959 Tracey Ullman.
• 1809: Wearing masks at balls forbidden in Boston. What is the deal with Boston, anyway?
• 1879: Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance premieres.
• 1940: California's first freeway (Arroyo Seco Parkway, aka Pasadena Freeway) opens.
• 1963: Let's Make A Deal debuts.

31 New Year's Eve
• 1869 Henri Matisse; 1908 Simon Wiesenthal; 1921 Rocky Graziano; 1941 Sarah Miles; 1942 Andy Summers; 1943 John Denver, Ben Kingsley; 1946 Diane von Furstenberg; 1947 Tim Matheson; 1948 Donna Summer; 1959 Val Kilmer, Bebe Neuwirth.
• 1890: Ellis Island opens; its original name, "Yitzak Islanowicz" mistakenly changed by immigration clerk.  
• 1907: First time a ball drops at Times Square to signal the new year; Dick Clark hosts.
• 1929: Guy Lombardo plays Auld Lang Syne for the first time.
• 1935: Charles Darrow patents the board game Monopoly.
• 1963: Grateful Dead founders Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir play music together for the first time; both are too high to notice that the other is there and it is three years before they realize they're in the same band.
• 1976: Guy Lombardo plays Auld Lang Syne for the last time.
• 1981: CNN Headline News debuts.
• 1995: Cartoonist Bill Watterson ends his Calvin & Hobbes comic strip.