January 3 in Pop Culture History
January 3 is Take A Nerd To Lunch Day
1521 – Martin Luther was excommunicated by Roman Catholic Church
1777 – Washington defeated the British at Battle of Princeton, NJ
1847 – Yerba Buena renamed San Francisco
1871 – Oleomargarine was patented (#110626) by Henry Bradley in Binghamton, NY
1919 – Professor Ernest Rutherford succeeded in splitting the atom. He split nitrogen atoms into oxygen atoms.
1920 – New York Yankees purchased Babe Ruth from Red Sox for $125,000
1924 – British Egyptologist Howard Carter found the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen (King Tut)
1938 – March of Dimes was established
1951 – Dragnet premiered on NBC
1959 – Alaska was admitted as 49th U.S. state
1970 – #1 Hit January 3, 1970 – January 30, 1970: B. J. Thomas – Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head
1970 – Jon Pertwee made his first appearance as the Third Doctor in the Doctor Who episode Spearhead from Space. It also marks the first time that the series was broadcast in color. (colour in the UK)
1973 – George Steinbrenner III bought the Yankees from CBS for $12 million
1976 – #1 Hit January 3, 1976 – January 9, 1976: Bay City Rollers – Saturday Night
1977 – Apple Computers incorporated
1977 – Holly Hallstrom joined Janice Pennington and Dian Parkinson as a showcase model on The Price is Right.
1979 – The USA cable network was founded
1983 – Plinko was added as a Pricing Game for the series The Price Is Right
1987 – Unsolved Mysteries premiered (as a special) on NBC
1987 – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the 1st female artist, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin
1991 – First television sets to feature closed-caption display are introduced in the U.S.
1993 – ABC and CBS simultaneously broadcast their own movies based on the Amy Fisher story with ABC’s starring Drew Barrymore and CBS’s starring Alyssa Milano. NBC had already beaten the other networks airing their own version about six days prior.
1997 – Bryant Gumbel anchored his last episode of the Today Show.
