September 18th in nerd history: So that hairy thing is your cousin?
Last updated: June 3, 2024
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September 18 in Nerd History
Here are five things that happened on September 18th for those of us who bought the ride photos.
I.
Birthdays of honor: Fred Willard (1933), Dee Dee Ramone (1951), James Marsden (1973), Jason Sudeikis (1975), James Gandolfini (1961), John McAfee (1945), Greta Garbo (1905), Frankie Avalon (1940), Lance Armstrong (1971).
II.
Today in 1987, one of the most memorable films of the last several decades came out with Fatal Attraction.
Not that I would be able to tell you much about this movie because I was too young to see it at the time, and it was drilled into my head that this was a scary adult movie — and frankly I'm still terrified of it. But even without my ticket sale, it became the highest-grossing movie of 1987 worldwide.
Glenn Close stalking Michael Douglas? Yep, too scary for me.
But here's one that I totally could have watched as a kid — in 1951 the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still hit theaters.
When a flying saucer lands in Washington, D.C., it's surrounded by the U.S. Army. Naturally, no one trusts the alien that comes out (even though he looks suspiciously human), so they start shooting. But the giant robot accompanying the alien simply makes all the army's weapons disappear.
Turns out the alien is named Klaatu, and he's basically there to give Earth a choice: either stop it with all the wars and the nuclear weapons or get destroyed by giant, invisible robots. What a conundrum!
And the '90s became like official-official today in 1992 when Cameron Crowe's Singles was released in theaters. While it was a moderate hit at the box office, it became a barometer for the attitudes, style, and music that would come to define much of the 1990s.
If you never saw the movie, there's still a really good chance you owned the soundtrack, considering it sold over 2 million copies in the United States alone. It came out months before the movie and heavily featured bands from the Seattle grunge scene, including Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.
III.
In 1964 we got to meet everyone's favorite macabre household when The Addams Family TV series premiered on ABC. Based on cartoons originally published in The New Yorker and drawn by artist Charles Addams, the show only ran for two seasons and 64 episodes.
But multiple generations came to love the quirky characters as it consistently re-aired in syndication, leading to crossovers with Scooby-Doo, the '90s live-action movies, an MC Hammer song, animated films, and a viral Netflix show, to name a few.
IV.
In 1970 Jimi Hendrix was tragically found dead in his basement in London at the age of 27. Following years of struggling with substance abuse and addiction, he ingested a combination of barbituates and alcohol that would ultimately prove deadly.
He's still regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, if not musicians period.
V.
Today in 2009 the soap opera Guiding Light aired for the final time, ending an insane 72-year run between radio and TV broadcasts.
The longest-running soap opera of all time and the fifth-longest-running broadcast in history, the TV version also helped to launch the careers of actors such as Billy Dee Williams, Kevin Bacon, Taye Diggs, Calista Flockhart, and James Earl Jones.
It was replaced in the fall of 2009 by Wayne Brady's revival of Let's Make a Deal.