20 AUGUST
In Music History
1923 Country singer Jim Reeves is born in Galloway, Texas. Known for the 1957 hit "Four Walls."
1920 In Detroit, what will become WWJ (950 AM) becomes the first radio station in America to start broadcasting.
1882 Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" debuts in Moscow.
Golden Record Goes Into Space
1977The Voyager 2 space probe is launched, carrying with it a "Golden Record" of sounds and images representing Earth.
Read more20 AUGUST
Featured Events
2016 The Tragically Hip play their final concert, calling it quits at a show in lead singer Gord Downie's hometown of Kingston, Ontario. Downie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in December 2015.More
1995 After a lengthy press-fueled feud culminates in simultaneous singles releases, Blur's "Country House" beats Oasis' track "Roll With It" to the #1 spot in the UK. Oasis go on to enjoy worldwide mainstream success, while Blur later veer from the Britpop sound, developing an artier, more experimental style – heavily inspired by Pavement.
1992 Embroiled in controversy over his song "Cop Killer," Ice-T doubles down by appearing in a police uniform on the cover of Rolling Stone.More
1988 At the Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington, England, two fans are killed during a set by Guns N' Roses, whose frontman Axl Rose had implored the crowd, "Don't f--kin' kill each other." With the ground wet and a record crowd of 107,000 at the festival, the surge of bodies during the set causes the two fans to be trampled or crushed to death.More
1983 Taco's cover of the Irving Berlin song "Puttin' On the Ritz" reaches #9 on the Hot 100, making the 95-year-old Berlin the oldest living songwriter ever to land a Top 10 on that tally.
1977 The Emotions hit #1 in the US with the disco track "Best Of My Love" for the first of five weeks. Two years earlier, the Eagles hit #1 with a song with the same title.
1972 Stax Records commemorates the seventh anniversary of the 1965 Watts riots with a star-studded benefit concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. More than 100,000 fans show up to hear Isaac Hayes, The Bar-Kays, The Staple Singers, and Kim Weston, among others, perform at what becomes known as Wattstax.More
1948 Robert Plant is born in West Bromwich, West Midlands, England. Best known at Led Zeppelin's lead singer, he wins the Album of the Year Grammy for Raising Sand, his 2007 collaboration with Alison Krauss.
1942 Soul superstar Isaac Hayes is born in Covington, Tennessee.
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